Question

describe one way that the term extinction has been misused, describe what really is occurring  in your example

Answer 1

Extinction occurs when a learned behaviour sieze exist or does not occur due to not repeatedly accompanying it with reinforcement that was provided while learning that behaviour.

A scenario where the term extinction has been misused can be:

Say, a person has learned to dance to a song and have not been practicing it for years. Now this person is unable to perform to that song after years because they were not practising or have not performed it from a long time. Here, if someone says that extinction has taken place then it would be a misuse of this term. This is because the person while learning dance was not given any reinforcement, and there was no pairing or unpairing of reinforcement seen in the given scenario. Hence, it cannot be extinction.
Forgetting is what that has occured here. This is because the behaviour (dance steps) is not occuring due to lack of practice or reduction in dancing overtime and not because of lack of reinforcements.

Therefore, in extinction a behaviour sieze to exist due to not pairing it with a reinforcer over time. On the other hand, in forgetting, the behaviour sieze to exist due to reduction of that activity or behaviour over time.