DAT Bootcamp 2026 Animal Behavior Bash – Unleash Your Wild Side and Ace It!

Sensitization is the phenomenon where a response to a stimulus increases after repeated exposure. Rather than becoming used to the stimulus, the organism’s nervous system becomes more reactive—often because the stimulus is perceived as more salient or arousing, or because prior exposures have heightened the response.

This is different from habituation, where the response gradually lessens with repetition. It’s also distinct from conditioning, which involves learning an association between two stimuli or between a behavior and a consequence, and from extinction, which is the reduction of a learned response when the reinforcement stops.

For example, if a relatively neutral sound repeatedly occurs and the animal’s startle response grows stronger over time, that increasing responsiveness is sensitization.