On 5 Sep 2011 at 18:25, Joann Jelly wrote:
> It had to happen. We all knew (watching "Law & Order" now and then)
> that Little Albert would be found; yet there was something sort of
> nostalgic to his lack of identification.
>
Killjoy that I am, I have to point out that not everyone is convinced
that this is a closed case, as certain inconsistencies have been
found in the identification of Little Albert with Douglas Merritte.
Of course, this is the way historical research often works, and
requiring absolute certainty is probably asking too much of such
investigations. But perhaps we should cautiously qualify the claim
that Little Albert was Douglas Merrite with the weasel-word
"probably".
Here's the abstract of a recent paper which questions the
identification:
Research notes: Little Albert, lost or found: Further difficulties
with the Douglas Merritte hypothesis.
Powell, Russell A.
History of Psychology, Vol 14(1), Feb 2011, 106-107. doi:
10.1037/a0022471b
Abstract
In some intriguing detective work, Beck, Levinson, and Irons (see
record 2009-18110-004) attempted to solve the mystery of what
happened to Little Albert, the infant in whom Watson and Rayner
(1920) claimed to have conditioned a rat phobia. They concluded that
a child by the name of Douglas Merritte, the son of a wet nurse at
Johns Hopkins Hospital, very likely was Albert (the published name,
Albert B, apparently having been a pseudonym). Powell (see record
2010-08987-015) and Reese (see record 2010-08987-016) outlined
certain difficulties with Beck et al.´s (2009) analysis, the foremost
being a comment from Watson (1924/1925) that Albert was later
adopted, whereas Douglas had remained with his mother (see Beck,
2010, for his rejoinder to Powell and Reese) (see record 2010-08987-
017). The present report presents an additional difficulty with the
Douglas Merritte hypothesis which concerns the estimated timeline
during which the baseline session (and first film session) of the
Albert experiment likely took place. It is the congruence between
Douglas´ age and the reported age of Albert during this estimated
timeline on which the case for Douglas being Albert largely rests.
Stephen
--------------------------------------------
Stephen L. Black, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology, Emeritus
Bishop's University
Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada
e-mail: sblack at ubishops.ca
---------------------------------------------
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