The “Rat Rabbit” Problem: What Did John B. Watson Really Do?

Prytula, Robert E.; Oster, Gérald; Davis, Stephen F.

doi:10.1207/s15328023top0401_12

Cited by 28 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…Since the work with Albert lasted for approximately 4 months, there seems to be a strong possibility that Watson's 1919 prediction was not entirely based on theoretical speculation. 2 After this survey of texts was completed, similar reviews by Cornwell and Hobbs (1976) and by Prytula et al (1977) were discovered. Interested readers should consult these articles for lists of additional textbook errors.…”

Section: Introductory-level Textbook Versions Of Albertmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There has recently been a revival of interest in Watson's conditioning research and theorizing (e.g., MacKenzie, 1972;Seligman, 1971;Weimer & Palermo, 1973;Samelson, Note 1), and in the mythology of little Albert (Cornwell & Hobbs, 1976;Larson, 1978;Prytula, Oster, & Davis, 1977). However, there has yet to be a complete examination of the methodology and results of the Vol.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Whatever happened to little Albert?

Harris¹

1979

American Psychologist

209

112

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s 1920 conditioning of the infant Albert B. is a wellknown piece of social science folklore. Using published sources, this article reviews the study's actual procedures and its relationship to Watson's career and work. The article also presents a history of psychologists' accounts of the Albert study, 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.Preparation of this article was aided by the textbook and literature searches of Nancy Kinsey, the helpful comments of Mike Wessels, and the bibliographic assistance of Cedric Larson. The author also thanks Bill Woodward and Ernest Hilgard for their comments on earlier versions of this work.Requests for reprints should be sent to Ben Harris,

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Section: Introductory-level Textbook Versions Of Albertmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Whatever happened to little Albert?

Harris¹

1979

American Psychologist

209

112

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“…Authors have made their share of mistakes. In recent years, for example, introductory textbooks have been criticized for misdrawing Pavlov's apparatus (Goodwin, 1991) and Mrs. Cantlie's homunculi diagrams (Griggs, 1988); for misrepresenting the Yerkes-Dodson law (Winton, 1987), Rogers's motivational constructs (Ford & Maas, 1989), and Watson's study of Little Albert (Harris, 1979;Prytula, Oster, & Davis, 1977); for distorting key aspects of sociobiology (Herzog, 1986) and Adlerian theory (Silverman & Corsini, 1984); for confusing the concepts of negative reinforcement and punishment (Morse, 1986); for inaccurately suggesting that researchers have reliably determined the number of neurons in the human brain (Soper & Rosenthal, 1988); for exaggerating the prevalence of multiple personality disorder and the magnitude of the link between stress and illness (Morse, 1986); and for uncritically reporting unsubstantiated claims about hemispheric specialization, extrasensory perception (Hines, 1985), the effects of stress on "executive monkeys" (McGovern, 1978), and the impact of early intervention on underprivileged children's intelligence (Sommer & Sommer, 1983).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Portraits of a discipline: An examination of introductory psychology textbooks in America.

Wight

Weiten

Teaching Psychology in America: A History.

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The time has gone by when any one person could hope to write an adequate textbook of psychology. The science has now so many branches, so many methods, so many fields of application, and such an immense mass of data of observation is now on record, that no one person can hope to have the necessary familiarity with the whole.-An author of an introductory psychology textIf we compare general psychology textbooks of today with those of from ten to twenty years ago we note an undeniable trend toward amelio-We are indebted to several people who provided helpful information in responding to our survey discussed in the second half of the chapter, including Solomon Diamond for calling attention to

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“…Often, we presume that the material in our textbooks is accurate. This trust is sometimes misplaced because several inaccuracies appear in introductory texts (McGovern, 1978;Prytula, Oster, & Davis, 1977;Wise, 1981). These inaccuracies are passed along from one text to another (Schulman, 1978).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Number of Neurons in the Brain: How We Report What We Do Not Know

Soper

Rosenthal

1988

Teaching of Psychology

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binations of actions and consequences that could not be described by the consequence grid. None exist. The four quadrants of the matrix can then be labeled by students, with each quadrant having a unique label. Students realize that the quadrant labeled negative reinforcement cannot, at the same time, be labeled punishment.A second remedy is to present several examples to illustrate that trying to distinguish instances of punishment and negative reinforcement sometimes results in ambiguous situations. For instance, "Because you talked back, you will have to stay after school," and "You will have to stay after school until you clean your desk," represent ~unishment and negative reinforcement statements, respectively. In the first statement, an aversive stimulus (staying after school) is being applied in order to decrease an unwanted behavior. In the second statement, an aversive stimulus (staying after school) is being removed in order to increase a desired behavior.As a third remedy, distribute teacher-prepared examples of each consequence. Ask students to label each consequence by identifying whether something desired or dreaded is being applied or removed. After students have mastered this activity, have them create their own examples, exchange them, and then evaluate each other's work.The remaining three remedies do not deal directly with teaching the concept of negative reinforcement. However, they do call attention to problems that interfere with learning the concept of negative reinforcement.As a fourth remedy, indicate that part of the confusion over negative reinforcement concerns the connotative meaning of the word negative. Too often people forget that the word negative in negative reinforcement simply indicates an action, not a value judgment. Positive refers to supplying something; negative refers to removing something. Students overlook the fact that both positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement contain the key word reinforcementsomething to which most people look forward.How far we go to avoid dealing with anything negative, including negative numbers, is highlighted in the familiar example of Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores. In reality, SAT scores are simply 9-scores with a mean of zero, a standard deviation of 1, and a range from -3 to +3. Imagine the panic if students earned SAT scores of -.3, -.5, or -1.6. Of course, when the negative sign and the decimal are removed by multiplying by 100 and then adding 500, one obtains the more recognizable and less threatening scores of 470, 450, and 340, respectively.Mention to students the relatively infrequent appearance of negative reinforcement in the literature as the basis for a fifth remedy. T o demonstrate that they have fewer opportunities to learn about this concept, you might have students review three common indexes, Psychological Abstracts, the Educational Resources Information Center's (ERIC) Resources in Education (RIE), and Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE). Have them count the number of citations for negative reinf...

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The “Rat Rabbit” Problem: What Did John B. Watson Really Do?

Cited by 28 publications

References 3 publications

Whatever happened to little Albert?

Whatever happened to little Albert?

Portraits of a discipline: An examination of introductory psychology textbooks in America.

The Number of Neurons in the Brain: How We Report What We Do Not Know

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