Question

Kathy is classically conditioned to fear the toilet flushing while she is in the shower because the flush causes a surge of hot water. Kathy showers at her parent’s house, someone flushes the toilet, and she does not get burned. Still, when showering back at home, the toilet flushes and Kathy immediately feels a surge of fear. This example best illustrates the fact that extinction.

a. forms the basis for non-associative learning when applied to novel situations.
b. helps readapt old learning strategies to novel problems.
c. is an adaptive response to delete information from memory.
d. reduces the strength of an association, but does not eliminate it.

Answer 1

Kathy's fear response to the toilet flushing while in the shower, even after not getting burned at her parent's house, demonstrates that extinction reduces but does not eliminate the strength of a conditioned association.

Step-by-step explanation:

The example of Kathy being classically conditioned to fear the toilet flushing while in the shower illustrates that extinction reduces the strength of an association, but does not eliminate it. Extinction in classical conditioning occurs when the conditioned stimulus (toilet flushing) is presented without the unconditioned stimulus (surge of hot water) repeatedly, leading to a decrease in the conditioned response (fear). However, this reduction does not completely erase the learned association, as the conditioned response can spontaneously recover after a period without the conditioned stimulus, or in a different context, as it did with Kathy when showering at her parent's house.