Little Albert and Classic Conditioning

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Little Albert and Classic Conditioning Wattrina Holiday June 18, 2013 South University Online Professor Revell For a long time psychologists wondered whether psychological conditioning was possible or not. Conditioning means to train an individual’s mind in such fashion that he or she behaves in a particular way. However, it was mainly just a hypothesis before Watson and Rayner conducted their first experiment. To get some scientific conclusion regarding this hypothesis Watson and Rayner conducted an experiment in 1920 at Johns Hopkins University with a little boy, named Albert. The experiment started when the child was just 11 months and 3days old. The overall idea that this essay is going to create is, ‘Psychological Conditioning is possible’ based on the experiment conducted by Watson and Rayner. I will explain how they conducted the experiment and whether the conditioning was permanent or not, with same or diminished intensity. However even if the conditioning is possible another important question remains, should this type of conditioning be encouraged? Initial pairing of the rat and banging bar was quite simple. The rat was presented alone at first and each time Albert tried to reach for it or touched it the bar was banged behind him. A sound of banging bar was unconditioned stimulus. The objective was to see if the pairing was maintained for a while, could Albert be conditioned to be afraid of the presence of the white rat (conditioned fear response). After a couple of tests Albert started to show signs of fear and began crying when the rat was presented to him without any sound. There are three terms related to classical conditioning namely, unconditioned stimulus, conditioned stimulus and conditioned response. In order to proceed we must know about them briefly. The unconditioned stimulus (US) is one that unconditionally, naturally, and
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