Taste Aversion through Classical Conditioning Essay

In the following essay I will be looking into the study conducted by Watson and Rayner (1920) on a small child known as ‘Little Albert’. The experiment was an adaptation of earlier studies on classical conditioning of stimulus response, one most common by Ivan Pavlov, depicting the conditioning of stimulus response in dogs. Watson and Rayner aimed to teach Albert to become fearful of a placid white rat, via the use of stimulus associations, testing Pavlov’s earlier theory of classical conditioning.

I learned to feel nauseous when I ate broccoli and cheese soup through classical conditioning. It’s an example of classical conditioning because a connection was created between two stimuli, bacteria and broccoli and cheese soup, that resulted in a response, nausea, that was biologically out of my control (text, p. 254). Furthermore, operant conditioning involves an existing behavior being either encouraged or discouraged, and in this case, there was not a preexisting behavior (text, p. 263).

In previous studies, Frank and Byram’s article suggest that taste and smell interactions are dependent on taste and odor. In their experiments, they gave subjects strawberry

Classical conditioning is a type of learning in which an organism learns to transfer a natural response from one stimulus to another, previously neutral stimulus. Classical conditioning is achieved by manipulating reflexes. Operant conditioning is a type of learning in which the likelihood of a

Classical conditioning is a form of learning that is taught to us through experiences we encounter in our lives. It involves outside stimuli to trigger the condition we have learned to expect. For example, the sound of a lunch bell would trigger our stomach to start growling soon after hearing the bell ring. The expectation of food to come soon after hearing the bell and satisfy our hunger is what makes our stomach growl. This is something learned over time. Expectations can be both good and bad. Sometimes these negative experiences cause us to have certain behaviors when we are reminded of such an event.

The classical conditioning model was one of the first theories used to describe phobias. Many years ago, scientists observed that one could willingly elicit a fear response in an animal or human through systematic teaching. For example, if every time a rat is presented with a low buzzing noise, it is electrically shocked, eventually, when it hears the noise alone (with no shock), it will exhibit symptoms of fear. (3) Scientists

After several combined events of the white rat and the loud noise, Watson and Rayner also tested if other furry animals such as a rabbit and a dog also elicited a fear response. They discovered that in fact, they did. Even a fur coat, cotton, and a Santa Claus mask caused “Little Albert” distress. This study revealed that if a child is conditioned to be afraid of an animal, this fear can shift to other animals without the distinct conditioning for each animal (Jones, 1960). This concept is known as generalization, which is the

Learning is a fascinating concept. Everyone does it and everyone always has, but not everyone explores its eclectic process. That being said, through the course of history, it has been studied vehemently. Ivan Pavlov, a behaviorist, had some groundbreaking research on subclass of learning called classical conditioning. Coming across it incidentally, he discovered that dogs would salivate not only from eating food, but anything associated with them getting fed. Anything unnatural in their feeding process, he termed as the conditioned stimulus, which would result in the conditioned response of them salivating (Daniels). Though classical conditioning seems rather simple and commonsensible, the information psychologists have gathered from it has been revolutionary. It has shown psychologists the very basics of how we learn and adapt as organisms and opened the door for other studies (Myers 268). According to psychologists, learning is the process of acquiring new and relatively enduring information or behaviors (Myers 268).

A phobia can be acquired by a person by making the person associate one thing with something not pleasant or painful to them. The effect of this can be permanent if the extinction process on the person

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,

Classical Conditioning: Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov first described this type of learning through conducting research on the salvation reflexes in dogs recording how much they salivated each time they were fed. The physiologist found that dogs started salivating before they were fed and as soon as they heard the door open which meant they had come to associate the door opening with the arrival of food.

     Classical conditioning refers to a simple form of learning, which occurs through the repeated association of two or more different stimuli. Learning is

The dogs would start to salivate just by hearing the bell ringing, which normally would not produce this response. The first part of the process involves an unconditioned response, like blinking or salivating. The next part needed for classical conditioning is an unconditioned stimulus. The unconditioned stimulus is one that automatically produces the unconditioned response, such as the smell of food triggering salivation. During conditioning, the neutral stimulus, like the bell in Pavlov’s case, is repeatedly paired with the unconditioned stimulus, or the meat powder. After a while, the neutral stimulus becomes the conditioned stimulus. The conditioned stimulus then produces a conditioned response, since the subject of the experiment has associated the conditioned stimulus with the unconditioned response. Many interesting experiments have been conducted using classical conditioning. Another scientist that preformed an experiment with classical conditioning is John B. Watson. Watson used classical conditioned to make a young boy fear white fluffy objects. He scared the child by making loud noises every time the child was presented a white rat.

a) The role stimulus generalization plays in this problem is where mental images of the sights and smells of the clinic can become conditioned stimuli for nausea, aside from the nurse’s uniform, smell of rubbing alcohol or the waiting room.

Garcia et al research (Mazure, 2004) proves otherwise, as he shows rats initially made to drink the saccharine-flavoured water, injected with the poison after a delayed interval between the drinking and the drug, developed aversions to the saccharine flavoured water even after 24hours of delay. This illustrates, even when the CS-US is delayed, learning takes place and the ability to do so is adaptive in all species supporting that a general process learning theory is effective. The rat’s biological make-up has an innate tendency to associate illness with the taste of food previously eaten after one trial. Pairing a light with a paw shock, on the other hand, takes several trials to acquire and has low tendency to associate illness with visual or auditory stimuli. Whereas the rats are more likely to associate a painful event like shock with external auditory and visual than with taste stimuli. This revolves around preparedness and we can say that the laws of learning may vary with preparedness of the organism for the association and for those different physiological and cognitive mechanisms (McGowan, & Green, 1971). Louge (1981) also supports taste aversion as a classical conditioning biological constraint learned behaviour on humans as he carried out a questionnaire which resulted in students declaring they were aversive to certain foods. Characteristics, such as smell, sight and texture were also discovered.