Practice question · Multiple choice
A client is successfully treated for a spider phobia in a clinic and is fine for months. Walking in a park one autumn, the fear returns in full. Why does the return of fear follow from what extinction actually does?
Hints
- If extinction erased the association, what would spontaneous recovery and renewal be?
- Where was the safety learned, and where did the fear return?
Show the answer
B. Because extinction lays down competing learning, it does not erase.
Why
Extinction feels like erasure and is not: the clinic taught a second association — in this room, with this therapist, spiders predict nothing — which now competes with the original. One fact explains three phenomena: spontaneous recovery, renewal in a new context, reinstatement after a fright. It is why exposure therapy deliberately varies the setting.
Practise Classical Conditioning
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More questions on Classical Conditioning
- Trace the life cycle of one conditioned association, in order.
- Sort each described response by whether it shows generalization or discrimination.
- Select every statement that is TRUE about classical conditioning.
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