Final answer:
John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner demonstrated classical conditioning through their experiments with Little Albert, where they successfully conditioned a fear response to a white rat which then generalized to other furry objects. They showed how emotions could be conditioned and provided evidence of stimulus generalization.
Step-by-step explanation:
John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner demonstrated classical conditioning with their studies on Little Albert. They showed that emotional responses such as fear could be conditioned in humans. In their experiment, initially Little Albert was not afraid of a white rat, or other neutral stimuli. However, when Watson and Rayner paired the appearance of the white rat with a loud, scary noise (striking a hammer against a metal bar), Little Albert started to associate the white rat with the loud noise and exhibited fear in response to the rat alone. This conditioned fear also generalized to other similar stimuli, such as a fur coat and a Santa Claus mask.
In the context of this experiment, the Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS) was the loud noise, the Unconditioned Response (UCR) was Little Albert's innate fear response to the noise, the Conditioned Stimulus (CS) was the white rat, and the Conditioned Response (CR) was the fear response to the white rat after conditioning.
Little Albert began to be afraid not only of the conditioned stimulus but also of objects similar to it, demonstrating stimulus generalization. This was indicated by his fear response to other furry items after being conditioned to fear the white rat.
Albert Bandura proposed observational learning, which differs from classical and operant conditioning, as it involves learning by watching the actions and outcomes of others' behavior rather than through direct experience.