EXPERIMENTS - LEARNING - LIL ALBERT Flashcards
1
Q
Who conducted and in what year did the little albert experiment occur
A
Watson & Rayner (1920)
2
Q
What was the aim of the little albert experiment
A
Aimed to find out if an infant child could be classically conditioned.
3
Q
What were the methods of the little albert experiment
A
- Albert was 8 months old when he was first brought in to study; he was presented with many stimuli and was reportedly unafraid of anything he was shown.
- The stimuli consisted of “a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks with and without hair, cotton wool, burning newspapers, etc.”
- Approximately two months after the baseline session, Albert was subjected to conditioning sessions where a white rat was presented to albert, then a few seconds later, he was startled by one of the experimenters striking a steel bar with a hammer.
4
Q
What were the results of the Little Albert experiments
A
- After the pairing of the rat with the loud noise, Albert only had to see the rat before he immediately showed signs of fear and avoidance when no loud noise was present.
5
Q
What were the results of the experiment later on after the experiment
A
- The fear began to fade as time went on, however, the association could be renewed by repeating the original procedure a few times.
- Watson and Rayner found that Albert developed phobias of objects that shared characteristics with the rat; including the family dog, a fur coat, some cotton wool, and a Santa mask – generalisation had occurred.
6
Q
Explain on the validity of the experiment was give reasons why the validity of the experiment was so debated upon
A
- The loud noise may have made Albert fear any new stimulus in the laboratory setting.
-They didn’t control for the maturation of Albert over the 4 months of testing.
- Albert’s responses were inconsistent – Albert was much more calm when he was allowed to suck his thumb.
- As this was a case study, there was no control & it cannot be generalised.
