Question

Essay 750 words about

"Little Albert and Classical Conditioning"

The original article by Watson and Rayner was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 1920. There is a reprint of the original article which can be found in the South University Online Library. Here is the reference for the article reprint: Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (2000).

There have been several classic experiments to study and describe classical conditioning; one of the more famous is the Little Albert experiment. Over the years, the experiment has lost some of its validity due to numerous interpretations by several introductory psychology textbooks. It is, therefore, beneficial to go back to the original (or primary) source and read what the authors of the experiment themselves had to say.

Read the article and answer the following questions:

In the study, what are unconditioned stimulus (US), conditioned stimulus (CS), and conditioned response (CR)?

Explain the concept of generalization in regards to Watson and Rayner's ability to condition Albert to react to different stimuli such as masks, other animals, and a fur coat?

Using examples from the study, explain the concept of extinction

Answer 1

Answer 1.

The aim of Watson and Rayner’s Little Albert experiment was to condition a phobia in an emotionally stable child. For the study they chose a nine-month old infant from a hospital referred to as "Albert" for the experiment. Albert was put on a mattress on a table in the middle of a room and white laboratory rat ( a neutral stimulus that in itself cannot trigger a response in the individual) was placed near Albert and he was allowed to play with it. At this point, Watson and Rayner made a loud sound behind Albert's back by striking a suspended steel bar with a hammer ( unconditioned stimulus that triggered fear in the infant) each time the baby touched the rat. Albert responded to the noise by crying and showing fear which was the unconditioned response to the noise. After several such pairings of the two stimuli, Albert was presented with only the rat. Upon seeing the rat, Albert got very distressed, crying and crawling away which indicates that the rat had now become a conditioned stimulus because of its consistent pairing with noise such that the infant associated the white rat with the noise. The rat now began to elicit an emotional response or the conditioned response similar to the initial distress (unconditioned response ) originally given to the noise (unconditioned stimulus).

Answer 2. In further experiments, Little Albert seemed to generalize his response to the white rat to other objects as He became distressed at the sight of several other furry objects, such as a rabbit, a furry dog, and a seal-skin coat, and even a Santa Claus mask with white cotton balls in the beard.

Answer 3.

Albert was about one year old at the end of the experiment, and Though Watson had discussed what might be done to remove Albert's conditioned fears, he had no time to attempt such desensitization as Albert reportedly left the hospital shortly thereafter and it is likely that his fear of furry things continued after the experiment. Later, Mary Cover Jobes used the Watson-Rayner experiment as a background for her own study on how to eliminate fear responses in children. She studied a boy named Peter, who was two years old and he shared similar fears of white rabbits and furry objects to Little Albert. Jones gradually increased Peter's tolerance of white rabbits by exposing him to the feared animal, known as direct conditioning, and then introduced Peter to an environment where he interacted with children who were not afraid of the rabbit. Thus, Jones demonstrated that phobia can be reduced or made extinct through the process of systematic desensitization or uncondition a fear response.