Thursday, June 14, 2018

Spontaneous Recovery

Spontaneous recovery is an interesting part of psychology, and can be quite difficult to understand. Spontaneous recovery happens after part of an instinctual routine is eliminated or exterminated but returns after a few days. There can be many examples of this, one being a person who has the flu. Everyday this person may wake up, eat breakfast, and then go to school. While having the flu, there may be some difficultly trying to do these tasks so they may wake up, not eat, and eventually just go back to bed. After a few short days they will begin to feel better, and eventually will go back to their normal routine. This is the spontaneous recovery of the routine that they know and have to endure everyday, and one that flu leaves them they will go on to doing it again. The video also explains how a smoker can also endure the same thing, and feel the need for a cigarette years after the extinction of that behavior.

2 comments:

  1. I have heard of spontaneous recovery before and also find it very interesting. The fact that our brains can always revert back to an old habit really amazes me.

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  2. I think this is an interesting topic as it is the reappearance of a conditioned response that has been extinguished. This reminds me of the show Intervention, which relates to those who have drug addictions. For some of the people who go away to a rehabilitation treatment center to help extinguish their drug/alcohol addiction, it proves to be successful. However when they come back home and get back in their old environment/ routine, they may relapse.

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