Conditioned Inhibition

A concept in behaviorism, conditioned inhibition is an internal state that has been behaviorally learned by an organism that prevents it from responding to stimuli that they typically would respond to -- for example, not salivating when exposed to food. This type of inhibition can be conditioned into an organism through the use of punishers (i.e. electric shocks) or lack of reinforcers.

This is part of the spectrum of conditioned and unconditioned responses (CR and UR) proposed by Pavlov.

There are four types of conditioned inhibition: extinction, disinhibition, differential inhibition, and delayed inhibition.