What term describes a relatively permanent change in an organism's behavior due to experience?

The term that describes a relatively permanent change in an organism's behavior due to experience is "learning." Learning involves the processes through which individuals acquire knowledge, skills, behaviors, or adaptations through interaction with their environment. It is a crucial aspect of animal behavior and emphasizes the role of experience in shaping how organisms respond in future situations.

Learning can take various forms, such as habituation, classical conditioning, and operant conditioning, each demonstrating how experiences can fundamentally alter an organism's responses and behaviors over time. This sets it apart from instinctual behaviors, which are often innate and not learned through experience, thereby highlighting the significance of experiential learning in adaptation and survival.

In contrast, stimulus response relates to the immediate reaction an organism has to a specific stimulus, which does not encompass the cumulative nature of learned behavior. Conditioning, while relevant to the processes of learning, specifically refers to types of associative learning rather than the broad concept of behavior change over time due to experience. Instinct refers to innate behaviors that are genetically programmed and are not the result of learning from experiences.