Study In Detail - Watson & Raynor - Lil Albert Flashcards
Procedure (general)
Baby was taken from an invalid children hospital
9 months and emotionally stable
9 months he was shown a white rat, rabbit and cotton wool and then a loud sound using a hammer was created to make him cry
Procedure (creating cr)
Not a case study. Duration of 2 months but only studied on 5 days.
At 11 months and 3 days he was shown white rat, no fear
As he touched it a bang was made to scare him. This was repeats after a week and he was shown it a number o times with and without the steel bar. He was also shown other stimuli e.g. Busing blocks. At 12 months and 21 yo to see if he had retained cr
Diagram
UCS: steel bar -> UCR: fear and cry UCS: steel bar \+ -> UCR: fear and cry CS/NS: rat CS: rat ->CR: fear and crying
Results
After a week a fear of rats developed as a learnt emotional response. He demonstrated stimulus generalisation towards things similar to the rat
At 7 weeks extinction occurred
Conclusion
Possible to condition humans
Might be necessary to repeat pairings
A condition response may be transferred to others
Evaluation - strengths ✅
Highly controlled - Iv was clear and operationalised, only one variable manipulated at a time, standardised procedures
Supports classical conditioning - w&r show clear examples including extinction and generalisation
Evaluation - weakness ❌
Lacks ecological validity - artificial lab settings, unnatural playing
Low population validity - single case experiment, one child only so it can’t be generalised.
Lacks experimental validity - design and process was not carefully constructed. Did not develop an objective. Relied on subjective interpretations.
Ethics - baby put under a log of stress. Although dirt ease they continued, fear my remain for the rest of his life
Aim
To see whether an emotional response could be classically conditioned to humans e.g. Fear to a white rat
To see if fear could be generalised
To see the time effect on cr
