Classical Conditioning

His first experiment was on a 3 year old child that was blindfolded. Lamal & Windholz (1986) explained that he used a bell as the conditioned stimulus and honey as the unconditioned stimulus (p. 193). After several dozen trials, the child responded to the bell conditioned stimulus with the movement of his mouth and an increased rate of swallowing (Lamal & Windholz, 1986, p. 193). The conditioned stimulus still occurred after a two week period. In his second experiment, he conditioned a 6 year old child to respond to a bell and uses pieces of chocolate as the unconditioned stimuli (Lamal & Windholz, 1986, p. 193). He also did experiments on generalization and differentiation. His experiences were on sound and tactile stimuli.

In classical conditioning, there are four critical elements: the unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned stimulus, the unconditioned response, and the conditioned response. The unconditioned stimulus (US) is a stimulus that causes a response before any conditioning, and an unconditioned response (UR) is the way something reacts to an unconditioned stimulus (text, p. 256). In my example, the US would be bad bacteria, and it resulted in the UR of nausea. A conditioned stimulus (CS) involves a neutral stimulus (NS), something that didn’t originally cause a reaction, becoming something that causes a conditioned response after a connection is made to the US (text, p. 256). In my example, the

Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov had done experiments on dogs showing the conditioning process, but Watson was interested in taking Pavlov’s research to the next level and show that emotional reactions can be classically conditioned in people (Cherry, 2016). They used a nine-month-old baby boy and exposed him to a series of stimuli including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks and burning newspapers and watched the boys reaction, initially he showed no fear of the objects he was shown (Cherry, 2016). He then decided that he

Classical conditioning is a type of associative learning which occurs when two stimuli are paired together repetitively and therefore become associated with each other eventually producing the same response. Classical conditioning was developed from the findings of Ivan Pavlov to account for associations between neutral stimuli and reflexive behavior such as salivation. Pavlov (1927) accidently discovered that dogs began to salivate before they had tasted their food. To support his theory, he carried out experiments using dogs which involved measuring the amount of saliva they produced. In his experiments, food started off as an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) which produced salivation, an unconditioned response (UCR). They are both unconditioned as they occur naturally without being learned. The dogs were presented with a bell (NS), this provided no salivation. The bell and food were presented together and after many trails an

Inspired by the work of Ivan Pavlov, Watson conducted his own experiment, with the help of his assistant Rosalie Rayner, to show classical conditioning in humans. Watson and Rayner wanted to show that the principles of classical conditioning could be applied to emotions, such as fear. Watson believed that when children reacted to loud noises, it was because of fear, and that this fear was an unconditioned reflex.

Albert’s baseline reactions to the stimuli were noted. He showed no fear when presented with a rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, a mask with hair, or cotton wool. When Albert was 11 months old the experiments started.

A virtual rat, Sniffy, was used for this experiment. Sniffy the Virtual Rat, Pro Version 3.0 allows for the demonstration of Pavlovian and operant conditioning of a virtual rat. Tom Alloway, Greg Wilson, and Jeff Graham, authors of Sniffy the Virtual Rat designed this program to be an affordable alternative for students to gain “access to the main phenomena of classical and operant conditioning that courses on the psychology of learning typically discuss” (Jakubow, 2007). The program allows for simulations for Pavlovian conditioning such as acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, stimulus-intensity effects, compound conditioning, blocking, overshadowing, overexpectation, inhibition, sensory preconditioning,

The experiment lasted 15 consecutive days. During the experiment, the rats were placed into 12 identical operative chambers which was used for all behavioral training and testing. Each chamber had an automatic retractable lever

The Little Albert experiment has become a famous case study that has been discussed by a plethora of professionals in the psychology industry. In 1920, behaviorist John Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner began to conduct the first experiment that had been done with a child. Watson and Rayner chose Albert because they thought he was stable; he was accustomed to a hospital environment due to his mother’s career as a wet nurse, he was healthy and showed little emotion. Stability played a major factor in choosing Albert for this case study because Watson wanted to ensure that they would do as little harm as possible with the experiment. The conditioning of Albert began with a series of emotional tests that became part of a routine in which Watson and Rayner were “determining whether fear reactions could be called out by other stimuli than sharp noises and the sudden removal of support” (-----). Watson’s method of choice for this experiment was using principles of classic conditioning to create a stimulus in children that would result in fear. Since Watson wanted to condition Albert, he used a variety of objects that would otherwise not scare him. These objects included white rat, dog, blocks, rabbit, fur coat, wool and a Santa Claus mask.

Another experiment by psychologist Robert Miller and his colleagues was designed to see if a monkey was able to interpret another monkey’s facial expression. The researchers trained rhesus monkeys to pull a lever to avoid getting shocked after a

”Watson and Rayner exposed the child to a series of stimuli, including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks, and burning newspapers and observed the boy's reactions. The boy initially showed no

John Watson used an infant named “Little Albert”, he showed the child many objects such as white rat, rabbit, monkey, masks, burning paper and so on. The child showed no fear towards any of these objects. Then Watson paired the white rat with a loud noise, which made Little Albert cry. After doing this repeatedly the child would just cry at the sight of the white rat alone. This experiment demonstrates how powerful the environment was for Little Albert. Also how two stimuli in an environment, creates a conditioned response. This conditioned response would be the child crying just by seeing the white rat. This also created stimulus generalization, Little Albert then started crying at just similar white things and furry things. Many suspect that Little Albert will stay frightened from these objects. This experiment confirms how environment gratefully impacts human behaviour because of how first they were able to create a conditioned response, secondly it turned into generalized stimulus and lastly how many suspect Little Albert will stay fearful of these white and furry

Summary of the video The video clip above titled “Ivan Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning Psychology Experiment” (2015) posted by a young man named, Andrew Daughters, is a great visual image of the classical conditioning experiment that we learned about in class this week. The start of the video is Andrew reminding us of what Ivan Pavlov’s classical conditioning entails. He says that classical conditioning of an unconditioned stimulus (throwing the ball made out of paper) causes an unconditioned response. Then the neutral stimulus (the phone chime) is paired with the unconditioned stimulus, the neutral stimulus alone causes a response (Daughters, 2015).

In order to induce a conditioned reflex Pavlov paired neutral stimuli, in this case a bell, with the meat powder. Acquisition is the root of learning in classical conditioning whereby the CS is paired several times with the US. The more pairings the more robust the learning as discussed by (Balkenius, 1999). Pavlov observed that after conditioning when the bell rang the dog salivated therefore, the neutral stimuli became conditioned stimuli (CS) and the dog, when presented with the bell would show the reflexive response (CR) salivation. Extinction occurred if the CS is no longer presented with the US. (Dhir, 2007). Conversely, reconditioning counters extinction when pairings are re-presented, this time however, the learning is faster, showing the initial acquisition is not completely removed from the memory of the animal. Spontaneous recovery is a phenomenon of the learned behaviour returning extemporaneously after the animal has rested. Hence the CS is again presented provoking the CR. Generalisation explains response to stimuli that is close to but not an exact match of the original CS. The closer the stimuli are to the original CS the stronger the CR.(Gleitman, Fridlund, & Reisberg, 1999)

As the months went on, young Albert didn 't cry consistently at the sight of the white rat. So the researchers let the animal crawl against the child 's chest. Watson and Rayner reported: "He first began to fret and then covered his eyes with both hands."