Today we are starting an experiment on classical conditioning. Our subject will be a baby kitten. We will be conditioning the kitten to be afraid of the brown ball of yarn. Our first step is to introduce the kitten to the yarn. It got very excited, instantly pounced on it, and it seemed as though the cat could play with it for hours. We let him enjoy it for about three minutes. Then, we switched to a white ball of yarn. He reacted the same way as he did with the brown ball of yarn. We let him play with that ball for the same duration of time. We also let the kitten play with a tan ball of yarn. In which he reacted as he did with the other two balls of yarn. After we had shown him all of the different balls of yarn. We brought back the brown ball of yarn. The kitten was quick to pounce right on to it. After it got off an went back to do it again we created a loud noise. The kitten got scared but …show more content…
Once The kitten got the courage he pounced back on to the ball of yarn only to hear the loud noise again. Which in turn scared him for a third time. we took a break and brought him the white ball of yarn again and he jumped right on it. After that we brought back the brown ball of yarn. We had finally conditioned the kitten to be afraid of the yarn. The kitten was hesitant and he didn’t jump back on the ball of yarn. We brought back the tan ball of yarn and the kitten also pounced right on to it. Again we brought back the brown ball of yarn and the kitten backed away. We brought out a brown yarn rug to see if the kitten would exhibit generalization, the tendency to respond in the same way to different but similar stimuli, or if the kitten would exhibit discrimination which is the ability to perceive and respond to differences among stimuli. We brought out the rug and the kitten was still very hesitant of the brown yarn rug. We concluded that the kitten exhibited