Interesting, Id have to say that its more of a survival instinct probably, than some sort of conditioning from an event, but idk Made me think of this, interesting, and a little psychopathic no doubt The Little Albert experiment was a case study showing empirical evidence of classical conditioning in humans. This study was also an example of stimulus generalization. It was carried out by John B. Watson and his graduate student, Rosalie Rayner, at Johns Hopkins University. The results were first published in the February 1920 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology. John B. Watson, after observing children in the field, was interested in finding support for his notion that the reaction of children, whenever they heard loud noises, was prompted by fear. Furthermore, he reasoned that this fear was innate or due to an unconditioned response. He felt that following the principles of classical conditioning, he could condition a child to fear another distinctive stimulus which normally would not be feared by a child. MethodologyEdit The aim of Watson and Rayner was to condition phobias into an emotionally stable child.[1] They chose Albert from a hospital for this study at the age of almost nine months.[2] Alberts mother was a wet nurse at the Harriet Lane Home for Invalid Children. Albert was the son of an employee of the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where Watson and Rayner were conducting their experiments.[3] As the preliminary to the experiment, Little Albert was given a battery of baseline emotional tests: the infant was exposed, briefly and for the first time, to a white rabbit, a rat, a dog, a monkey, masks with and without hair, cotton wool, burning newspapers, etc. During the baseline, Little Albert showed no fear toward any of these items. Albert was then placed on a mattress on a table in the middle of a room. A white laboratory rat was placed near Albert and he was allowed to play with it. At this point, the child showed no fear of the rat. He began to reach out to the rat as it roamed around him. In later trials, Watson and Rayner made a loud sound behind Alberts back by striking a suspended steel bar with a hammer when the baby touched the rat. Little Albert responded to the noise by crying and showing fear. After several such pairings of the two stimuli, Albert was again presented with only the rat. Now, however, he became very distressed as the rat appeared in the room. He cried, turned away from the rat, and tried to move away. Apparently, the baby boy had associated the white rat (original neutral stimulus, now conditioned stimulus) with the loud noise (unconditioned stimulus) and was producing the fearful or emotional response of crying (originally the unconditioned response to the noise, now the conditioned response to the rat). This experiment led to the following progression of results: Introduction of a loud sound (unconditioned stimulus) resulted in fear (unconditioned response), a natural response.[4] Introduction of a rat (neutral stimulus) paired with the loud sound (unconditioned stimulus) resulted in fear (unconditioned response).[4] Successive introductions of a rat (conditioned stimulus) resulted in fear (conditioned response). Here, learning is demonstrated. The experiment showed that Little Albert seemed to generalize his response to furry objects so that when Watson sent a non-white rabbit into the room seventeen days after the original experiment, Albert also became distressed. He showed similar reactions when presented with a furry dog, a seal-skin coat, and even when Watson appeared in front of him wearing a Santa Claus mask with white cotton balls as his beard, although Albert did not fear everything with hair. There was some confusion when pairing the noise with the rabbit and dog.[4] Watson was using the same kind of classical conditioning as Pavlov used in his experiments with dogs.[5] This experiment did not have a control subject. Post experiment After showing an approach and avoidance conflict with the objects presented to him at the age of 1 year and 21 days, shortly after conclusion of the series of experiments, Albert was removed from the hospital.[6] Watson had discussed hypothetically how to desensitize a human but knew from the beginning of the study that there would not be time. As Albert left the hospital on the day the last tests were made, no desensitizing ever took place, and it is possible that Alberts fear responses would continue post-experiment.[7] Following the conclusion of the experiment, Watson was known to give weekend lectures describing the Little Albert study. One of these lectures was attended by Mary Cover Jones and the lecture sparked her interest in pursuing graduate work in psychology.[8] She became known as the mother of behavior therapy following a study she conducted with a three-year-old named Peter. Jones participant, Peter, already possessed a fear of white rabbits. Jones used multiple fear-reducing practices to decrease this. Her most successful method was direct conditioning where a pleasant stimulus, the childs favorite food, was presented along with the rabbit. The rabbit was brought closer and closer to Peter while in the presence of his favorite food. Eventually, the child became tolerant of the rabbit and was able to touch it without fear.[9] Mary Cover Jones also did extensive research on the study of personality across the lifespan; however, the popularity of the Peter study overshadows some of her more prominent research.[10] Finding Little Albert In 2009, psychologists Hall P. Beck and Sharman Levinson published an article in which they claimed to have discovered the true identity of Albert B.[11] After reviewing Watsons correspondence and publications, as well as research in public documents (such as the 1920 United States Census and state birth and death records), Beck argued that Albert B. was a pseudonym for Douglas Merritte, the son of Arvilla Merritte, then a woman who appears to have been a wet nurse at the Harriet Lane Home.[11] Recent research has shown, however, that Douglas Merritte could not have been Little Albert (Digdon, N., Powell. R. A., & Harris, B., in press; Powell. R. A., Digdon, N., Harris, B. & Smithson, C., in press).[12] Researchers at MacEwan University found that Little Albert was most likely Albert Barger who died in 2007. After tracking down Albert Bargers family, they came across his niece. She said he was a pretty laid back guy but he didnt really like dogs or small mammals.[13] en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Albert_experiment
Posted on: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 04:22:06 +0000
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