The process by which a C.R can be weakened and finally eliminated

SOLUTION

Spontaneous Recovery

• Spontaneous recovery occurs after a learned response is extinguished.
• Suppose an organism has learned to make a response for getting reinforcement, then the response is extinguished and some time lapses.
• A question now may be asked, whether the response is completely extinguished, and will not occur if the CS is presented.
• It has been demonstrated that after lapse of considerable time, the learned or CR recovers and occurs to the CS. The amount of spontaneous recovery depends on the duration of the time lapsed after the extinction session. The longer the duration of time lapsed, the greater is the recovery of learned response. Such a recovery occurs spontaneously.

Following diagram shows the phenomenon of spontaneous recovery:

Deconditioning (Extinction of Conditioned Reflex or Response):

• Deconditioning means removing conditioned reflex or response.
• With the help of deconditioning, many irrational fears can be removed from the minds of children.

Experimental neurosis 

• Itis an abnormal behavioral condition produced in an artificial laboratory setting.
• The subject is typically placed in a problem solving or discernment scenario they cannot solve because it is too difficult or impossible. This can result in erratic altered behavior that mimics a mental disorder.

​Extinction

• It means disappearance of a learned response due to removal of reinforcement from the situation in which the response used to occur.
• If the occurrence of CS-CR is not followed by the US in classical conditioning, or lever pressing is no more followed by food pellets in the Skinner box, the learned behaviour will gradually be weakened and ultimately disappear.
• Learning shows resistance to extinction. It means that even though the learned response is now not reinforced, it would continue to occur for sometime.
• However, with increasing number of trials without reinforcement, the response strength gradually diminishes and ultimately it stops occurring.

Hence, The process by which a C.R can be weakened and finally eliminated is known as experimental extinction. Because the removal of learned response is intentionally done by the experimenter.

Note: there was mistake in the question in official paper. So, we corrected the question to make it as a practice question with a detailed solution.