Which of the following is cited as a weakness of the Little Albert study?

• A. Albert may have neurological problems making him untypical.
• B. The sample size was too large.
• C. It used purely observational data.
• D. It included adults.

Answer: (A)

This item tests a weakness related to participant representativeness in the Little Albert study. If Albert had neurological problems making him untypical, his responses to the stimuli could reflect underlying atypical development rather than a general pattern of conditioned fear in infants. That means the results might not tell us about how most infants learn fear, so the findings can’t be assumed to generalize. The study also only involved one child, which compounds the issue of generalizability. The other options don’t fit because the problem isn’t a too-large sample, the data weren’t purely observational (it used a controlled conditioning procedure), and the participant wasn’t an adult.