Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The process of habituating or the state of being habituated.
  • noun Physiological tolerance to a drug resulting from repeated use.
  • noun Psychology The decline in responsiveness to a stimulus due to repeated exposure.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of habituating, or the state of being habituated.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of habituating, or accustoming; the state of being habituated.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The act of habituating, or accustoming; the state of being habituated.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a general accommodation to unchanging environmental conditions
  • noun being abnormally tolerant to and dependent on something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming (especially alcohol or narcotic drugs)

Etymologies

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Examples

  • For example, they wrote, "Will someone show long-term habituation to consecutive meals of cheese pizza, pepperoni pizza and mushroom pizza?"

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2011

  • Pedreira EM, Romano A, Hermitte G, Maldonado H (1998) Context-US association as a determinant of long-term habituation in the crab

    PLoS ONE Alerts: New Articles Emiliano Merlo et al. 2008

  • But if the ad had been repeated, audiences would have grown inured to the threat, a psychological effect called habituation.

    The Nuclear Option Ken Kurson 2011

  • This habit is called virtue, and the success of this habituation is also called virtue.

    Stoicism, Sophistry and Sodomy Hal Duncan 2009

  • This habit is called virtue, and the success of this habituation is also called virtue.

    Archive 2009-08-01 Hal Duncan 2009

  • That lack of response, called habituation, is primitive learning.

    Special Issue: How Kids Grow Do You Hear What I Hear? 2008

  • Tom found that spaced repetition converted the memory for short-term habituation and sensitization to longer-lasting memories.

    Eric R. Kandel - Autobiography 2001

  • They warn that in many places, messages are broadcast with such frequency that their actual meaning is blocked out by listeners, in a psychological phenomenon known as "habituation".

    Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph Telegraph Staff 2011

  • "There is an actual psychological theory called habituation, which states that when people are together almost every day and get used to that person, their presence no longer elicits a feel-good response."

    10 great day trips that only cost $20 2010

  • If they are exposed to the vibrations every 30 seconds, however, they eventually get used to them and stop responding (it generally takes 10 to 12 stimulations), through a process called habituation - much as people living close to a railway track eventually stop noticing the sound of passing trains.

    New Scientist - Online News 2010

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