That's called conditioning. Yes, a large part of DOA is conditioning. It's also realizing when you've accidentally conditioned your opponent to exploit your own weaknesses.
Then you have to determine whether or not they are the kind of personality that is also attempting to condition you. Then you have to determine whether or not they are capable of recognizing their pattern has been spotted before you've exploited it and are going to change it up.
And then you have to double check and make sure that this is actually the case, and they were not just hitting buttons in an arbitrarily random fashion which made it seem like this was the case.
It's a shame you can't figure any of this out without taking some damage first. That is, if anything, the biggest flaw to fighters at the moment.