Final answer:
John Watson's experiment on Little Albert involved using a loud sound as an unconditioned stimulus to elicit a fear response, with the white rat becoming the conditioned stimulus. Albert then generalized this conditioned fear to other similar furry objects, which is known as stimulus generalization, not stimulus discrimination.
Step-by-step explanation:
In the case of Little Albert, who was part of a famous psychology experiment by John Watson and Rosalie Rayner, the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) was the loud sound, which naturally elicited an unconditioned response (UCR) of fear in Albert. The conditioned stimulus (CS) became the white rat, which after pairing with the loud noise, led to the conditioned response (CR) of fear when the rat was presented alone. After this conditioning process, Albert showed stimulus generalization by also becoming afraid of other furry objects, demonstrating that he did not just fear the white rat but any similar stimuli. This is contrary to stimulus discrimination, where an individual learns to respond only to the specific conditioned stimulus and not to similar stimuli. Thus, in the context of the quiz question provided, the correct answer is (d) stimulus generalization.