Answer:
The best answer to the question: He was studying whether or not ___ had occurred, would be: stimulus generalization.
Step-by-step explanation:
The experiment that John B. Watson carried out on Little Albert, in the 1920´s, had the purpose of showing the process of classical conditioning of responses to stimulus. After managing to produce a reaction of fear in Little Albert, the child who was subjected to Watson´s experimentation, the researcher further wanted to see if the conditioned response to the rats would extend to other stimuli. As such, he used animals that were similar to the rat, and tried to ascertain the responses by the child. This use of animals similar to the one that caused the initial response, is called stimulus generalization.