What is sensitization learning?

Sensitization is where something happens over and over again and you become more sensitive to it. As an example... if the boy who sits beside you in class pokes you one day, it might not bother you, but if he keeps doing it, over and over again, it becomes more annoying, and you become sensitized to that action, and it might start bothering you more and more until one day you can't stand it anymore and ask to change seats, or hit him to make him stop... which is a significant escalation from the first time it happened where you noticed but it didn't really bother you.

The opposite is desensitization, or habituation... when something happens over and over again, and it starts bothering you less, or you start kind of putting it in the background and noticing it less. An example might be moving to an apartment with a lot of traffic noise. At first it might bother you a lot, but as you continue to live in that apartment, it becomes background noise, and after a while, you barely notice it or don't notice it at all unless someone else calls it to your attention.

These are things that we learn, but rarely in a classroom setting... we learn to react differently as we experience things over time.