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Finding Little Albert

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Watson & Rayner - Little Albert

From Maren (2001), Neurobiology of Pavlovian fear conditioning

Perhaps the most famous person in behaviourism is Little Albert. In the winter of 1919/20, John B. Watson and Rosalie Alberta Rayner (graduate assistant at that time, but later Mrs Watson) attempted to condition a baby boy, Albert B., to be afraid of a white laboratory rat (Watson & Rayner, 1920). You can read the original article on Classics in the History of Psychology or listen to it at the Internet Archive. Watson also made a 16 mm movie of it (discovered by B. Harris), from which several fragments are available at YouTube. The full movie is for sale at The Pennsylvania State University for $200!

The experiment soon became a hallmark in psychology, not in the least by the efforts of Watson himself (he wrote several articles about it) but also because it was picked up in introductory textbooks. Unfortunately, from that moment on, errors started to occur. According to Harris (1979), numerous errors appeared in the story: the age of Little Albert (8m:26d -12m:21d), his name, the spelling of the name of Rosalie Rayner, the initial conditioning of a white rat or rabbit, the generalisation to all other white objects, the un-conditioning, … These errors were the result of leaning too heavily on secondary sources. Cogpsy.info tries to prevent this by providing the original full texts as much as possible.  You can listen to some, in-depth background information in the BBC radio 4 podcast “John Watson and Little Emotional Albert” from the outstanding “Mind changers” series.

John Watson and Little Emotional Albert

Another reason for the almost mythical character of the study was the ignorance about the fate of Albert B. After the last day of testing, he left the Johns Hopkins campus. Watson and Rayner have never un-conditioned him from his fear of white rats, implying that Albert’s fears were “likely to persist indefinitely, unless an accidental method for removing them is hit upon” (p. 12).

In 2009, after seven years of investigation, Beck, Levinson, and Irons discovered however an individual, Douglas Merritte, who shared many (10) characteristics with Little Albert, which made the authors conclude that this person was in fact Little Albert. The BBC made a documentary about it; regrettably, only for view in the UK. You can watch an excerpt on YouTube.

Unfortunately, Douglas Merritte died from hydrocephalus (water on the brain) and convulsions at the age of 6. Of course, this begs for the question: Was ‘Little Albert’ already ill during the famed conditioning study?

According to Fridlund, Beck, Goldie, & Irons (2012) Little Albert (aka Douglas Merritte) was not quite as Watson wrote: “Albert’s life was normal: he was healthy from birth” (p. 1). In fact, he was probably neurologically impaired, confirmed by medical records from Johns Hopkins University. They verify that Merritte indeed had congenital hydrocephalus. If the baby had a severe cognitive deficit, then his reactions may not have been typical and generalizing shouldn’t be allowed. Apart from the already known weaknesses of the experiment (one subject, confounding of classical and operant conditioning, subjective assessment of emotional response, lack of control condition, lack of follow-up, …) this is another blow to a highly rated and classical study in psychology.

But what makes it worse, as the authors of the paper argue, is that Watson and Rayner must have known that Little Albert was impaired. This raises serious questions about their ethical and scientific standards.

But, of course, only if Douglas Merritte was indeed Little Albert, see for example Powell (2011). To be continued.

The post Finding Little Albert appeared first on Cogpsy.info.


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