Question

What was learned from john watson's "little albert" study? it is important to ignore the consideration of a child's mental health as long as the research is important enough. fear can be learned via classical conditioning, but cannot be generalized. fear can be learned via classical conditioning, and that fear can be generalized. fear can be learned via operant conditioning, but cannot be extinguished?

Answer 1

I believe the correct answer is fear can be learned via classical conditioning, and that fear can be generalized.
During this experiment, Watson presented Albert with a white mouse and a scary sound, so every time Albert saw a mouse, he was scared by the sound. Over time, he learned to be afraid of the mouse because he was expecting to be scared by the sound, even though the sound may not come. Thus, he learned to be afraid, and the fear was generalized not only to the mouse, but to anything white. 

Answer 2

Answer

John Watson taught us that emotional response to a neutral stimulus that already had happened can be naturally conditioned and generalized.  

Explanation

John Watson was a behaviourist and a graduate student of Rosalie Rayner. He continued the experiment or research on the conditioning process in dogs, done by a Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov, to study the conditioning process in humans. He named his study as the ‘Little Albert’.

Further explanation

John Watson and Rosalie Rayner did further study on humans to show that emotional reaction could be classically conditioned. Their participant was a baby of nine months, whom they named as ‘Albert B’, today popularly known Little Albert. He showed the baby several stimuli which included a white rat, masks, a rabbit, a burning newspaper, and a monkey, and studied the reactions shown by the boy. At first, the boy had a neutral reaction to the entire objects that were shown to him.

So, next time Watson showed a rat to Albert and simultaneously had hit a metal pipe with a hammer to produce a loud noise. It was natural for the child to be scared and cry after the noise. So next time when Watson showed Albert simply a white rat without any noise, the kid began to cry seeing it.

The study provides an instance of a relation between classical conditioning and emotional response-

Neutral Response on seeing the white rat.

Unconditioned Response on hearing loud noise.

Unconditioned Response was fear.

A Conditioned Response on seeing the white rat.

Conditioned Response was fear.

Thus, the fear was generated in Albert not only seeing a white mouse, but on seeing anything white or white furry objects. However, why the reaction generated could not be figured out because the baby was taken to some other place by his mother.

Learn more

Learn more about The Little Albert study at: brainly.com/question/10200912  

(Answered by LearnGrow).

Learn more about John Watson's study brainly.com/question/9065092

(Answered by NeuroTravel).

Keywords

John Watson, behaviourist, Russian psychologist, the little Albert study, stimulus, neutral, conditioned, unconditioned, white furry objects.