Little Albert (Slothrup)

[David Morris]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26307-baby-used-in-notorious-fear-experiment-is-lost-no-more.html?full=true#.VCyR8WK9KSM

<http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26307-baby-used-in-notorious-fear-experiment-is-lost-no-more.html?full=true#.VCyR8WK9KSM>*Baby
used in notorious fear experiment is lost no more*

You'll have heard of Pavlov's dogs, conditioned to expect food at the sound
of a bell. You might not have heard that a scarier experiment – arguably
one of psychology's most unethical
<http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26223-shockers-psychology-experiments-that-wed-ban-now.html>–
was once performed on a baby.

In it, a 9-month-old, at first unfazed by the presence of animals, was
conditioned to feel fear at the sight of a rat. The infant was presented
with the animal as someone struck a metal pole with a hammer above his
head. This was repeated until he cried at merely the sight of any furry
object – animate or inanimate.

The "Little Albert" experiment, performed in 1919 by John Watson of Johns
Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, was the first to show
that a human could be classically conditioned. The fate of Albert B has
intrigued researchers ever since.

Hall Beck <http://psych.appstate.edu/faculty-staff/hall-p-beck> at the
Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, has been one of the
most tenacious researchers on the case. Watson's papers stated that Albert
B was the son of a wet nurse who worked at the hospital. Beck spent seven
years exploring potential candidates and used facial analysis to conclude
in 2009 that Little Albert was Douglas Merritte, son of hospital employee
Arvilla.
A life cut short

Douglas was born on the same day as Albert and several other points tallied
with Watson's notes. Tragically, medical records showed that Douglas had
severe neurological problems and died at an early age of hydrocephalus, or
water on the brain. According to his records, this seems to have resulted
in vision problems, so much so that at times he was considered blind.

Beck and his colleagues reanalysed grainy video footage of Watson's
experiments, in which they claim Little Albert shows behavioural deficits
that were "grossly abnormal". These included being unusually uninterested
in the animals when he was initially presented with them, and some kind of
perception problem. They consulted with two clinicians, who suggested that
Albert showed signs of neurological damage that fitted with Merritte's
medical records, discovered at a later date. Could Watson have known about
this impairment and lied when he said that he had chosen Albert because he
was a healthy, psychologically stable, baby?

If correct, "the significance of Beck's revelation was that it indicated
the scale and nature of the researcher's dubious practices was far greater
than previously supposed," says Alex Haslam
<http://psychology.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=alex_haslam>, a
psychologist at the University of Exeter, UK.

But not everyone was won over. "When Beck claimed he had discovered Little
Albert I was so excited," says Russ Powell at MacEwan University in
Alberta, Canada, "but then I started finding inconsistencies."
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20141001/dfd9cae9/attachment.html>