Concept of Extinction

Extinction
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Extinction
In Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA), extinction means the gradual weakening of a specific conditioned response, which result in decreasing the occurrence of certain behavior. In other words, it means stopping a conditioned behavior. Individuals and animals usually repeat specific behaviors since they are rewarded or reinforced. However, if the conditioned response that promotes the occurrence of a specific behavior is avoided, it means that people and animals stop behaving in a certain way. The paper focuses on the concept of extinction and gives three real-world examples of how it takes place.
Extinction involves discontinuing reinforcement or rewarding a specific conditioned behavior. In other terms, it refers to the absence of reinforcement. Practitioners and researchers use extinction to reduce problematic behavior (Trump, Ayres, Quinland, & Zabala, 2020). In classical conditioning, it is evident that when a conditioned stimulus becomes presented in the absence of an unconditioned stimulus, its associated conditioned response eventually disappears. In addition, extinction entails the lack of reinforcing a specific behavior, which is intended to eliminate it. Indeed, it simply means to discourage a specific behavior by failing to recognize, reward, or reinforce it when it occurs. The gradual weakening of the conditioned response leads to the disappearance of the targeted behavior over time.
Ivan Pavlov defined conditioning as the process of learning through which a specific behavior is dependent on the stimulus occurrence in that environment (Akpan, 2020). For instance, let’s assume that a neutral stimulus, such as the ringing of a bell, before a dog is given meat. In this case, giving the dog meat is an unconditioned stimulus. However, if the behavior is repeated several times, that is, every time a bell rings, the dog is given meat, the conditioned response becomes salivation. The dog will start ...