The Case of Little Albert

[Murthy Yenamandra]

I've been reading _The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the
Bicameral Mind_ by Julian Jaynes and came across the famous case of
"Little Albert" - an early experiment (1920s) in conditioning of fear in
infants by the psychologist J. B. Watson (father of behaviorism in the
US).  I've never seen this mentioned on the list before, so I hope it's
not old news to most of you.  Here is a description of the experiment,
cribbed from the webpage http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/80337/6215m3f.htm:

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"Little Albert is one of the most famous infants in all of psychology.
This is because he was the unwitting subject in an early behavioral
experiment performed at John [sic] Hopkins University.

"Albert was an 11 month old infant at the time of his conditioning. [He
was abandoned by his mother on the steps of the University Hospital]. At
the start of the experiment, Albert was tested to determine if he had
any fear for live animals, a human mask, or cotton. Upon initial
presentation, none of these stimuli elicited a response (neutral
stimuli).

"In the second step of the experiment, Albert was shown a white rat. As
he looked at the rat, a research  assistant standing behind Albert hit a
steel bar with a hammer, creating a loud and startling noise.  During
the first trial, Albert was reported to have jumped. Such a jump is an
expected startle reaction caused by an involuntary response of the
autonomic nervous system. During the second trial, Albert is reported to
have cried.The research continued, showing Albert the rat and striking
the metal bar. By the 8th trial, Albert is reported to have cried and
attempted to crawl away -- even before the noise of the hammer striking
the bar. Clearly at this point, Albert has been conditioned. The
previously neutral stimuli of the rat has been paired with the startle
reflex, and can now elicit the response that previously had been
elicited by the loud noise.

"Continuing the research to study generalization, Albert was brought back
to the laboratory after 5 days. At this point in time, he began crying
when he was shown a rabbit. This represents response generalization as
the rabbit was never directly paired with the loud noise, but now acts
as a conditioned stimulus. Over some period of time, the response
generalizes further to dogs and fur coats. However, as is typical, the
response to dogs and fur coats is not as strong as the response to a rat
or even a rabbit. This is consistent with findings that amplitude of
response to generalized stimuli is weaker than the response to directly
conditioned stimuli. We know from Watson's writing that Little Albert's
response lasted over a month.

"We do not know whatever happened to Little Albert. [This cruel
experiment ended when the mother changed her mind and came back to pick
up her abandoned baby supposedly without giving Watson an opportunity to
decondition the fear.] Reviewing this research always creates an image
for me of some lonely, elderly man, huddled on a street in Baltimore,
scared to interact with anyone because of his many fears of soft or
white objects. Ands worst of all, he has no idea why he is afraid!"

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A review of early learning theorists:
	http://frank.mtsu.edu/~pyskip/ltlec8.htm

The career of J. B. Watson (with pictures of Little Albert):
    http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~kensicki/watson-behav.html

Interestingly enough (and I quote from the first link above): "Watson
was in love with Rosalie [his Research Assistant] and when his wife
found out there was hell to pay! It was a national scandal: University
Professor and Graduate Student caught in the act! In the 1920's one did
not get a divorce, but they did. Watson was blackballed and never
allowed to teach at any university or other school and was not allowed
to do anything in Psychology ever again. Watson wound up marrying
Rosalie, having two boys, and doing mailroom work for a small
advertising company. In two years, Watson was Vice President and the
company was one of the largest in the U.S.! Watson applied Pavlovian
Conditioning to advertising and the rest is history."

Murthy

-- 
Murthy Yenamandra                  mailto:yenamand at cs.umn.edu
Dept of Computer Science           University of Minnesota
"brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio" - Horace