Watson and Rayner's Study

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  • Created by: TessBlyth
  • Created on: 19-10-20 13:27

AIM

to investigate if they could classically condition a fear response in a child towards an animal by presenting it to an infant child with a loud noise.

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SAMPLE

Little Albert, who was a 9-month old baby boy at the start of the research. He was raised mostly in a hospital environment as this was where his mother worked. He was reported to be stolid and unemotional.

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PROCEDURE

Albert went through a series of emotional tests and was found to not show any fear responses to any situation. The conditioning process started 2 months later.

SESSION 1: little albert was presented with the rat. when he went to reach out for it a loud bar was struck behind his head. this was done twice.

SESSION 2: a week later albert was exposed to the pairing of the rat and the loud noise 5 more times. after this he was showed building blocks as a control to which he showed no fear.

SESSION 3: after 5 days, albert was tested on his response to the rat when the bar was struck. he was further tested with other objects such as wooden blocks, a rabbit, cotton wool and a fur coat in the same way.

SESSION 4: albert was taken to a theatre with 4 people present after 5 days where he was tested on his responses to the various objects and loud noise.

SESSION 5: the final test a month later included a variety of different objects e.g. rabbit, rat, dog, santa claus mask.

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RESULTS

  • albert showed no fear to any of the stimuli except the loud noise in baseline testing.
  • in session 1, he fell forward and whimpered when the loud noise was introduced.
  • in session 2, he was more cautious toward the rat and would not reach out to touch it as before.
  • after further conditioning, he began to cry and crawl away from the rat.
  • in session 3, his fear was generalised to other white furry objects like a rabbit but no fear towards anything else.
  • in sessions 4 and 5, his fear reactions to white furry objects remained the same but became less extreme over time in different environments.
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CONCLUSION

Conditioning a phobia response such as crying and crawling away from the rat was easy as it took only 2 sessions and stimulus generalisation occurs as albert showed fear to similar looking objects. conditioned responses can become extinct over time as albert didn't cry at the initial presentation of the rat at 1 year and 21 days.

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