Little Albert experiment analysis

The purpose of the essay is to provide a clear discourse analysis of the Little Albert Experiment based on the textbooks provided. The analysis will include discursive objects, approaches, myth, ethics, learning, gender, Little Albert, history, white rat, and historical research on the treatment of Little Albert based on neuroscience, cognitivism, and behaviorism discussed in the psychological books. Discourse analysis is described is concerned with the social life of people, especially in their language and ethics. During the analysis, a significant written or vocal event is evaluated. The analysis involves objects such as communicative event, conversation, writing and a discourse. The experiment was to be done until the time Albert was 11 months old (Powell et al. According to Watson, the experiment was controlled and it showed empirical evidence of classical reasoning in human beings.

Watson’s description of the experiment is similar to that of Comer and Gould, Weiten and Davey since they all relied on stimulus generalization and classical conditioning. In this, all organisms are viewed to respond to stimuli after the reception. For example, Albert was exposed to a loud noise which was an unconditioned response and noise was a form of language used in the classical conditioning principles. Therefore, Davey's arguments on the anxiety disorder are relating to the Albert Experiment though there is a slight difference in the stimuli used. In the real-life situations, people experience fear in various situations. For instance, a student waiting for an exam may face the anxiety disorder which affects the way of handling the examination paper.

Also, the issue of fear in the little infant relates to the way children develop fear and interest to the world objects and animals. For instance, many children today fear animals such as dogs and cats while others do not. For instance, the nature of fear tends to focus on a small group of situations and objects such as animal phobias just as the infant in the experiment encountered. Generally, phobias can be described in terms of classical conditioning just as in Watson’s Little Albert Experiment. In 1920, Watson used classical conditioning to condition the infant in response to fear of the presented stimuli. The rat used was a conditional stimulus which the infant would respond to. Similarly, a loud noise was produced by striking an iron bar to determine whether Albert would show signs of fear.

The study shows that many changes in the nervous system are created during the association even when ethical problems are encountered. This means Comer and Gould use the criteria of neuroscience to describe classical conditioning as opposed to the other researchers. In the analysis, the act is said to develop as cerebellum in the brain adapts to the stimuli during classical conditioning. Watson used the same language of classical conditioning to learn how the health of the infant would respond to stimuli. Generally, changes in the brain persist thus affecting the nervous system to regain its initial state. Conversely, the failure of the infant to respond to the white rat meant that the stimulus used was neutral. Therefore, the language of stimulus generalization by Watson's study is evident that similar stimuli can occur to substitute conditioned stimulus.

Therefore, learning process involving fear-conditioning among the animals is a proof of the effect of emotions on the learning even though fear causes painful shock. Moreover, the main basis of development is fear conditioning such as phobias which is initiated by the nervous system According to Weiten (2007), classical conditioning word explains the elements that affect the overall behavior of an animal that responds to the stimulus. As a result, many theorists emphasize on the learning actions which change the behavior in response to the stimulus. However, some organisms fail to adapt to the behavioral changes if the ethical problems of the conditioned responses affect them. According to Weiten (2011), the language of extinction is used to refer to the situation in which there are gradual disappearance and weakening of responses based on conditioning.

In classical conditioning, extinction originates from the act of conditioned stimulus. For example, the presentation of the tone to a conditioned dog which led to salivation as an elicit response. The dog had adapted to the sound of a bell which was rung at the time of providing food to the dog. For instance, conditioned anxiety is quite hard to extinguish. As presented in the Little Albert Experiment, a stimulus can be generalized after conditioning. It happens when organisms develop tendency in responding to the actual conditioned stimulus. To determine generalization, the response tends to respond in a similar way to a current stimulus identical to the initial one. Similarly, a stimulus can be discriminated in case an organism that learned the response to the stimuli fails to respond in a similar method as the new stimuli.

On the other hand, researchers only focused on behaviorism and classical conditioning instead of cognitivism and this causes ethical problems among the organisms. The behavioral works support the organisms, especially when responding to the stimuli. For instance, when Albert's mental capacity was conditioned with the stimuli, its behavior changed to respond to the stimuli. Consequently, the doctor performed mental testing to determine if his mental health had changed in response to the white rat and noisy sound. Clinical psychology helped in the testing since the baby could be seen crying as a way of responding to the stimuli. , & Field, A.  Complete psychology. Routledge. Greenwood, J. D. , Digdon, N. , Harris, B. , & Smithson, C. Correcting the record on Watson, Rayner, and Little Albert: Albert Barger as “Psychology’s lost boy”.