Monday, October 26, 2009

Little Albert: Found!


I haven't read the American Psychologist article about this yet, but this summary from the Mind Hacks blog summarizes the story pretty well: Dr. Hall Beck from Appalachian State University has been trying to track down the identity of "Little Albert" for 7 seven years, and he succeeded! It sounds like the article describes in detail how he used historical records, photographs, and facial recognition experts to figure out the true identity of the baby Watson and Rayner worked with all those years ago. Spoiler alert: don't read the end of the end of the blog post if you want to read the original and find out Albert's fate.

Also, Mary Cover Jones published an article years after the Little Albert study on using classical conditioning to "cure" a child of fears: A Laboratory Study of Fear: The Case of Peter.

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