Little albert, taste aversion generalization

Post on 18-Nov-2014

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Taste Aversion and Baby Albert

Transcript of Little albert, taste aversion generalization

Watch the Office clip one more time. This time, use your knowledge of psychology.

Pick out each of the following parts of classical conditioning in the videos.

US = Offering an Altoid

UR = Accepting the mint

CS = Computer ding

CR = Accepting the mint

We know that classical conditioning takes time to accomplish, but can it happen after one trial run?

We know CC works on animals, but can it work on higher order human responses just as well?

What happens after we are conditioned to a certain response? Do we stay that way?

Usually conditioning takes multiple attempts,

There are instances when single exposure to stimulus can create conditioned responses.

Theory of Taste Aversion.

Predisposition to avoid certain foods that make us sick.

Hi guys!!!

What up BoB?

Not much, let’s get some

food!

I love food!

I want a baja fish taco!

Let’s all get a baja fish taco!

Now that we’re done eating, let’s go over Gifford’s

notes for fun!

I don’t feel so good, no notes for

me…

Me either…

Ditto…

What BoB and his pals just went through could condition them from ever wanting to eat tacos again.

After becoming violently ill, someone is less likely to eat the same food again. The smell or taste becomes a CS for nausea.

This process of aversion to certain foods protects animals and humans from toxic foods… in other words, once bitten twice shy.

Single trial conditioning can be life-altering.

Examples can range from burglary, robbery, assault or rape and usually revolve around an extremely traumatic incident.

Interesting anecdote on page 321.

As it turns out, John Watson asked a similar question…can higher order human responses be conditioned.

He attempted to do so on the now famous, Little Albert.

Watson decided to try to condition baby Albert’s emotions and draw out the emotion of fear which is not hardwired into our brain.

In a nutshell, Watson showed Albert various animals and then paired them with a loud sound.

Let’s see what happened.

Albert’s conditioned fear of other objects that are not animals shows the theory of generalization.

The tendency of stimuli similar to the CS to elicit a similar response.

I’m scary to Albert now.

I probably would be too!

What would happen if we kept hitting the tuning fork in front of Pavlov’s dogs?

Would this still continue???

After repeatedly hitting the tuning fork with no food to follow, Pavlov’s dogs gradually drooled less and less. Process called extinction.

If given a day or so in between fork hits, Pavlov found that the dogs also began to salivate even after time had passed after conditioning. Spontaneous recovery.