By today’s standards in psychology, the experiment would not be allowed because of ethical violations, namely the lack of informed consent from the subject or his parents and the prime principle of “do no harm”.

Spontaneous acquisition is the return of a previously extinguished conditioned response. The word “acquisition” should be changed to the word “recovery.”

What is the primary conclusion John B. Watson’s made after working with Little Albert? Emotions can be a conditioned response. He is famous for demonstrating the principles of operant conditioning: The motivation for a behavior happens after the behavior is demonstrated.

The Little Albert Experiment demonstrated that classical conditioning could be used to create a phobia. A phobia is an irrational fear, that is out of proportion to the danger. In this experiment, a previously unafraid baby was conditioned to become afraid of a rat.

In his most famous and controversial experiment, known today as the “Little Albert” experiment, John Watson and a graduate assistant named Rosalie Rayner conditioned a small child to fear a white rat. They accomplished this by repeatedly pairing the white rat with a loud, frightening clanging noise.

Watson & Rayner’s (1920) experiment on ‘Little Albert’ demonstrated that classical conditioning principles could be applied to condition the emotional response of fear.

Firstly, Little Albert was only nine months when he carried out this experiment. This could be seen as unethical for he could not give consent himself. His mother did give consent, however, she was very poor and Watson and Rayner did give her money to give consent.

Tragically, medical records showed that Douglas had severe neurological problems and died at an early age of hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. According to his records, this seems to have resulted in vision problems, so much so that at times he was considered blind.

– Albert’s mother was a wet nurse. Thus, Arvilla is one of very few women who could have been Albert’s mother. – Douglas was born on the Hopkins campus and cared for by his mother after she left the hospital. Therefore, it is very likely that Douglas lived on campus with his mother during the winter of 1919/20.

Douglas Merritte

In 2012, a group of American researchers led by Alan Fridlund and Hal Beck announced that they had uncovered new evidence that shows “Little Albert” is likely Douglas Merritte, a neurologically impaired baby who died shortly after the study.

The dogs would first be exposed to the sound of the ticking metronome, and then the food was immediately presented. After several conditioning trials, Pavlov noted that the dogs began to salivate after hearing the metronome.

A white laboratory rat 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 each time the baby touched the rat. Albert responded to the noise by crying and showing fear.

regardless of whether it is a positive or negative reinforcer, a reinforcer makes a response more likely to occur. What has occurred when there is a decrease in the likelihood or rate of a target response? For every 5 times that you go to the gym each week, you reward yourself with a treat.

Watson had originally planned to decondition Albert out of his fear of rats, in order to demonstrate that conditioned fears could be eliminated. Albert was removed from the experiment by his mother prior to this happening, which means that the experiment left a child with a fear that he did not previously had.

Soon after the experiments, Little Albert and his mother moved away from John Hopkins and disappeared. By tracking down financial records Beck found out that he was most likely to be the illegitimate son of the campus nurse, Arvilla Merritte, who had a boy called, Douglas.

In Watson’s experiment with Little Albert, the white rat was the (conditioned, unconditioned) stimulus, and Albert’s crying when the hammer struck the steel bar was the (conditioned, unconditioned) response.

Although their experiment was riddled with third variables such as age and mental ability. The experiment also is viewed widely as unethical, they taught an infant to be afraid of irrational things such as white fluffy animals, that he was previously unafraid of.

When an organism learns to respond differently to various stimuli that are similar, it is called stimulus discrimination. In classical conditioning terms, the organism demonstrates the conditioned response only to the conditioned stimulus.

extinction: One of the basic phenomena of learning that occurs when a previously conditioned response decreases in frequency and eventually disappears.

A learned stimulus. Where people and animals learn to do certain things, and not to do certain things. Reinforcement. The process by which a stimulus increases the chances that the preceding behavior will occur again.

Cards

The following are some examples of positive punishment: A child picks his nose during class (behavior) and the teacher reprimands him (aversive stimulus) in front of his classmates. A child touches a hot stove (behavior) and feels pain (aversive stimulus).

Positive punishment is a form of behavior modification. Positive punishment is adding something to the mix that will result in an unpleasant consequence. The goal is to decrease the likelihood that the unwanted behavior will happen again in the future.