PSY 1001 Assignment Little Albert and Classical Conditioning
PSY 1001 Assignment Little Albert and Classical Conditioning
Explain the initial pairing of the banging bar and the rat in terms of learning through classical conditioning. What are unconditioned stimulus (US), conditioned stimulus (CS), and conditioned response (CR)?
How were Watson and Rayner able to condition Albert to react to different stimuli such as masks, other animals, and a fur coat? Explain the concept of generalization.
PSY 1001 Assignment Little Albert and Classical Conditioning
Why didn’t the conditioning last over time? Explain the concept of extinction.
Considering the current standards, can the same experiment be conducted (or replicated) by researchers today? Explain some of the ethical issues related to the experiment.
Wrote in your own words using quoted material sparingly. Used appropriate terms and concepts from course and/or outside readings.
The Little Albert experiment was a famous psychology experiment conducted by behaviorist John B. Watson and graduate student Rosalie Rayner.1 Previously, Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov had conducted experiments demonstrating the conditioning process in dogs. Watson took Pavlov’s research a step further by showing that emotional reactions could be classically conditioned in people.
PSY 1001 Assignment Little Albert and Classical Conditioning
A Closer Look
The participant in the experiment was a child that Watson and Rayner called “Albert B.” but is known popularly today as Little Albert. When Little Albert was 9 months old, Watson and Rayner exposed him to a series of stimuli including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks, and burning newspapers and observed the boy’s reactions.
The boy initially showed no fear of any of the objects he was shown.
The next time Albert was exposed to the rat, Watson made a loud noise by hitting a metal pipe with a hammer. Naturally, the child began to cry after hearing the loud noise. After repeatedly pairing the white rat with the loud noise, Albert began to expect a frightening noise whenever he saw the white rate. Soon, Albert began to cry simply after seeing the rat.
Watson and Rayner wrote: “The instant the rat was shown, the baby began to cry. Almost instantly he turned sharply to the left, fell over on [his] left side, raised himself on all fours and began to crawl away so rapidly that he was caught with difficulty before reaching the edge of the table.”
Classical Conditioning
The Little Albert experiment presents an example of how classical conditioning can be used to condition an emotional response.
- Neutral Stimulus: A stimulus that does not initially elicit a response (the white rat).
- Unconditioned Stimulus: A stimulus that elicits a reflexive response (the loud noise).
- Unconditioned Response: A natural reaction to a given stimulus (fear).
- Conditioned Stimulus: A stimulus that elicits a response after repeatedly being paired with an unconditioned stimulus (the white rat).
- Conditioned Response: The response caused by the conditioned stimulus (fear).