The Elimination of Children's Fears.

Watson has shown how fears are acquired in infancy. The present writer attempts to show how they may be eliminated. An institution in which generally normal children were cared for was chosen as a laboratory, and 70 of these children, from three months to seven years of age, were studied. Various methods for eliminating fears were employed: the method of elimination through disuse; the methods of verbal appeal, negative adaptation, repression, distraction, direct conditioning, and social imitation. Unqualified success in removing fear was achieved in only two cases. Generally a combination of methods was used, but the two which seemed most effective were those of direct conditioning and of social imitation. From Psych Bulletin 22:12:00837. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)