Little Albert experiment

[username]

Would you say that the main steps of conditioning in Little Albert were Acquisition, stimulus discrimination and Stimulus generalization? Since he was never subjected to extinction, and spontaneous recovery didn't happen since it was never extinct?

Thanks for any help

[melaniej]

The main stages in the classical conditioning of a fear response in 'Little Albert' were as you mentioned above.
Acquisition was the process of him acquiring the fear response to the rat.
Generalisation was when it was applied to the rabbit etc
I'm not sure about discrimination? As he still showed a weak response to the coat and the santa outfit, so I'm unsure as to whether stimulus discrimination occurred.
Why do you ask, is there a specific question on this?

[ilovesuck]

hmm yes, i dont think stimulus discrimination and stimulus generalisation can occur at the same time...

[username]

Well the question was,

Name 4 of the main stages of classical conditioning in the little albert experiment.

I'm just wondering if extinction would be considered one, even though he was never really extinct.

[Eriny]

I guess you could put extinction in hypothetically, as in 'if Albert continued to see rats that were not paired with a stimulus which elicited a fear reaction...', but otherwise, there was some discrimination. Much of learning involves discrimination, after all, he could discriminate between the rat and the sight of his mother, for instance.

Is this based on a question? If so, do post it, if not, I wouldn't really worry too much about it.

[username]

Oh yeah it was based on a question. It was on a sample exam on Insight 2008, but I can't take it home since it was a school one, the question went like

"Name the four main stages of the B.Watson's Litlte Albert exp"

I asked the teacher today and she vaguely brushed me off with "oh just like before conditioning, after conditioning..."

So if it was like she said, what would the answer have been?

[jess3254]

I think the four stages would probably be/refer to:

First - test emotional response to rat:
RAT (would be neutral stimulus) ---> no emotional response

Second - test natural fear reaction to loud noise
SUDDEN LOUD NOISE (unconditioned stimulus) ----> fear (unconditioned response)

Third - associate rat and loud noise
RAT + SUDDEN LOUD NOISE ---> fear

Fourth - test emotional response to rat without the loud noise
RAT (conditioned stimulus) ----> fear

[arthurk]

agreed with jessie0
seems like a sorta question we could take a few ways but hers seems the most logical as it did end up with the little albert being conditioned to produce a fear response when presented with the white rat even in the absence of the loud noise