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Little Albert and Classical Conditioning

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Little Albert and Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning may be defined as; a kind of associative learning where two stimuli happen in a combined as well as frequent manner because of which, they ultimately become linked with each other. The outcome of this union is that each stimulus sooner or later generates an identical response. In fact, this technique is applied in behavioral training in which Unconditioned Stimulus (US) is paired with and leads towards the Conditioned Stimulus (CS) until the conditioned stimulus unaccompanied is enough to bring out the response (Abell et al., 1999). To understand it clearly, there is need to recall the experiment performed by John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner in 1920. Watson suggested that psychological researches should be based merely on apparent behaviors and due to this viewpoint, his research was related with conditioning of fear (learned). He demonstrated above conditioning via usual procedures including association of stimuli, and research subject chosen by him for the purpose was an 11-month old child Albert. Albert was an extremely firm infant who hardly ever exhibited fear of anything involving the white rat present in laboratory, but Watson and Rayner noticed that he was afraid of loud noises (Unconditioned Stimulus). They decided to implement this innate fear response (Unconditioned Response (UR)) shown by Albert as a tool in their study. So; they created piercing sound by striking a big steel pipe with hammer. In fact, they were trying to observe whether Albert can be conditioned to fear the white rat if his access up to rat is coupled with production of thunderous sound. After seven paired presentations of rat and deafening noise, a strong fear of rat got developed in Albert. This fear could be identified from the reaction (crying and moving in opposite direction) shown by him (also known as;

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