Whatever happened to "Little Albert" who was frightened repeatedly by a loud sound upon viewing a white rat?

-- Frank J Taylor (FrankJTaylor@msn.com), October 09, 2001

Answers

See:

Harris, Ben. (1979). Whatever happened to little Albert? American Psychologist, Vol 34(2), 151-160

ABSTRACT: Examines J. B. Watson and R. Rayner's 1920 conditioning of the infant Albert B. Using published sources, the present article reviews the study's actual procedures and its relationship to Watson's career and work. A history of psychologists' accounts of the Albert study is also presented, focusing on the study's distortion by Watson himself, general textbook authors, behavior therapists, and most recently, a prominent learning theorist. The author proposes possible causes for these distortions and analyzes the Albert study as an example of myth making in the history of psychology. (98 ref) ((c) 1999 APA/PsycINFO, all rights reserved)

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), October 09, 2001.

Apparently following his condition he was released by the hospital before he could be un-trained. To my knowledge he has never been heard from since, although it was proposed that his phobia would not likely have persisted into the later stages of development.

-- Alexander Best (ajbest@mail.com), November 27, 2001.

My lecturer told us that he had some issues and changed his name when he was older.

-- Mike Gardener (mgard1@aol.com), May 04, 2002.