Animal intelligence: Experimental studiesThorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Science
Animal intelligence: Experimental studies
Thorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Animal intelligence; Psychology, Comparative
(_d_) No. 3 had the following record in box Delta:—
2.00 (pushed with head)
3.20 (pushed with head)
30 F
10 F
10 F
2.10 (pulled wire and door).
I showed him 20 times by pushing the bar to the right with my finger. He
succeeded in 8.00 and 8.00 by pulling the wire and the door. No change in
object attacked.
(_e_) No. 2 had failed twice in 5 with chute QQ (ff) (chute string wire)
and succeeded once in 2.00 by a strong pull on the wire itself, not the
loop. I showed him 5 times, pulling the loop off the nail. He then failed
in 5. There was no change in the objects attacked.
These records show no signs of any influence of the tuition that are
not more probably signs of something else. We cannot attribute the
rapid decrease in time taken in (_b_) to the tuition until we know the
time-curve for the same process without tuition.
The systematic experiments designed to detect the presence of ability to
learn from human beings are thus practically unanimous against it. So,
too, was the general behavior of the monkeys, though I do not consider
the failure of the animals to imitate common human acts as of much
importance save as a rebuke to the story-tellers and casual observers.
The following facts are samples: The door of No. 1’s cage was closed by
an iron hoop with a slit in it through which a staple passed, the door
being held by a stick of wood thrust through the staple. No. 1 saw me
open the door of his and other cages by taking out sticks hundreds of
times, but though he escaped from his cage a dozen times in other ways,
he never took the stick out and to my knowledge never tried to. I myself
and visitors smoked a good deal in the monkeys’ presence, but a cigar or
cigarette given to them was always treated like anything else.
IMITATION OF OTHER MONKEYS
It would theoretically seem far more likely that the monkeys should
learn from watching each other than from watching human beings, and
experimental determinations of such ability are more important than those
described in the last section as contributions both to genetic psychology
and to natural history. I regret that the work I have been able to do in
the study of this phase of the mental life of the monkeys has been very
limited and in many ways unsatisfactory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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