Habituation

A reduction in a response following repeated stimulation, distinguished from sensory adaptation or motor fatigue. A decrease in anxiety during exposure can occur, but neither defines all therapeutic learning nor guarantees its transfer to another context.

Reduction in responding from one session to another. Comparisons should account for changes in task difficulty and context rather than interpreting lower distress during an easier task as equivalent learning.

Reduction in responding during a session. Its measurement depends on the response and time window; a distress trajectory is not automatically an index of lasting clinical change.