ticklishgiggle said:
Associating long nails, "tickle-talk" or even a look from a ler seems pretty normal, but what I was wondering is if a person can be taught to associate something random with the act of tickling. Like how I suggested a song.
I like how in Bella's case, it's just the phone ringing twice.
Potentially, yes... Odd or random stimuli can be successfully paired. While the dog salivating to the sound of a dinner bell may seem pretty normal, considering the relationship, consider instead an induced fear of cottonballs... In talking about conditioning, your class may also discuss the case of "Little Albert" -- an infant subject of a rather unethical conditioning experiment...
Babies are instinctually fearful of loud noise. Knowing this, experimenters took their subject (referred to as "Little Albert") and introduced him to a Santa Claus mask complete with fluffy false beard. He checked it out and showed no more reaction than curiosity. After several trials of this, demonstrating he had no fear of the object, the introduced it again, but this time, accompanied by the sound of cymbals clanging (I think that's what they used)... After only two trials (as I recall) with the loud noise pairing, Litlle Albert's fear extended now to the Santa Claus mask. Every time it was introduced, he'd scream and cry (even when there was no sound to accompany it).
It was found that he also generalized this fear to things sharing the same characteristics -- a white fluffy bunny, and cotton balls (each resembling the Santa Claus beard).
Fear is a powerful thing and often, it only takes one or two traumatic acts (pairing fear -- or something fear-inducing -- with the stimuli) to solidify it...
Pairing tickling with a song is certainly not impossible, but as with many things that are established in adulthood, the effects are likely to change with time and return to the previous baseline of reaction, unless they are continually paired to reinforce the association...
That is, you could condition someone to associate a song with being tickled, but unless that relationship is periodically revisited and reinforced (after a while of hearing the song without the accompanying tickling, the association will likely fade), eventually, the song will probably return to just being a song...
Now, as to the frequency with which the song needs to be paired with tickling for the association to remain effective? I'm not sure.