Auditory Habituation

Modified: 2024-06-13 11:10 AM CDST

• Habituation consists of not responding to a repetitive stimulus.
  • Habituation occurs most easily to stimuli of low to moderate intensity, and to repetitive stimuli.
  • For example, a clock in a room. Its ticking will no longer be noticed after one spends some time in the room.
  • Having guests in your house overnight is a good way to discover stimuli that you have become habituated to.
  • Once, some friends asked us at breakfast how we managed to sleep with all the cows across the street mooing all night.
    • Our answer was, "What cows?".
    • We had long since habituated to that particular stimulus.
• Similarly, people who live near railroad tracks also habituate to the nightly sound of passing trains.
  • But their guests will likely wake up when the 4:02 am freight train rumbles by.