Little Albert - Watson and Rayner 1920

Watson and Rayner 1920

Innocuos stimulus - A stimuli that wouldn't be exspected to create a fear response.

AIM OF THE STUDY -  To demonstarte thet Classical Conditioning could be used to create a fear response in a child, towards an inncous stimulus.

• to show that human behaivour could be accounted for by the process of Classical Conditioning.

METHODOLOGY -

Technique: Laboratory Experiment

Sample: 1 Participant "Little Albert" ( 9 months old at the start of the study ) thought to be mentally stable.

THE THREE STAGES

PRECONDITIONING STAGE

Little Albert was exposed to many NS nuetral stimuli to test if he gave a fearful response to any of them or not. He was shown various objects such as: White rat, White rabbit, cotton wool, a dog, a monkey, masks ( with and without hair) and burning newspaper.

his recations to the different objects were recorded and Watson ans Raynor found that Little Albert showed special interest in the WHITE RAT (NS) as it caused no natural reflex response.

CONDITIONING…