Mariah developed a fear of the water when she fell off a river raft last summer. this year she took swimming lessons and thought she had finally overcome her fear of water. she was eagerly looking forward to an upcoming rafting trip, however, to her surprise, as soon as she stepped onto the raft she was instantly terrified again. this illustrates the classical conditioning process known as

This classical conditioning process is known as spontaneous recovery, this process consisted in the reappearance of a conditional response that had disappeared.

The classic conditioning process indicates that we learn behaviors conditioned by situations we live in, in the case of Mariah is the fear of water, these behaviors can be maintained or extinguished, Mariah learned swimming to end her fear of water, but sometimes the learned behavior can appear after being extinguished and this is what is called spontaneous recovery.