Developmental Psychology

Achieve Test Prep: Developmental Psychology

• Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): food • Unconditioned Response (UCR): salivation • Conditioned Stimulus (CS): bell • Conditioned Response (CR): salivation

Important things to remember:

• UCR: usually is a natural reflex • Pavlov’s bell: originally a neutral stimulus (had no significance) • UCR becomes a CR when pairing the UCR with a new stimulus

Classical conditioning pairs a new reflex (involuntary physiological response) with a previously neutral stimulus (a bell), which now has meaning. Despite being useful, classical conditioning is limited due to the fact that only reflexive actions can be used. As such, it is not the optimal way to teach a variety of things. If responses can be classically conditioned, the responses can also undergo extinction. For example, if Pavlov’s dog were trained with a ringing bell and then were denied food, they would “unlearn” the association of a bell toll meaning food. Hence, the response can be reconditioned. Another example of classical conditioning is the Little Albert experiment , which was performed by John Watson. In this experiment, a nine-month-old boy was exposed briefly to a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, and monkey masks (with and without hair), cotton wool, and various other items the child had never been exposed to previously. Little Albert was not afraid of any of these items. Before turning one year old, Watson started to condition him. A white rat was placed near Albert and as he reached out for the rat, Watson would make a loud noise which scared Little Albert. The noise was paired with the white rat multiple times until eventually, Little Albert began to cry and show fear when the write rat was brought into the area. Little Albert now associated the white rat with the loud noise and feared the rat. • UCS: loud noise • UCR: fear/crying • CS: white rat (previously a neutral stimulus) • CR: fear/crying After the experiment, Little Albert showed stimulus generalization to all furry white objects, not just the white rat. He was also afraid of white cotton, a fake Santa beard, a white rabbit, and a sealskin coat.

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