Animal intelligence: Experimental studiesThorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Science
Animal intelligence: Experimental studies
Thorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Animal intelligence; Psychology, Comparative
They were tests of the animals’ ability to form the habit of going to a
certain place by reason of having been _carried_ there and securing food
thereby. I would leave the animal loose in the room, and if he failed
in 5 or 10 minutes to go to the place of his own accord, would put him
back in his cage; if he did go of his own accord, I would note the time.
Then I would take him, carry him to the place, and feed him. After doing
this 10 times I would turn him loose again and see whether the idea of
being fed in such and such a place was present and active in making him
go to the place. In such tests we are absolutely sure that the animal can
without any difficulty perform the necessary movements and would in case
the proper stimulus to set them off appeared, if, for instance, a bit of
food on one of the places to which he was to go caught his eye. In so far
forth the tests were favorable cases for learning. On the other hand, the
situation associated with getting food may have been in these cases not
the mere ‘being on box’ but the whole previous experience ‘being carried
while clinging and being put or let jump on a box.’ In this respect the
tests may have been less favorable than the acts where getting food was
always the direct sequent of the act of going into the box.
The experiments were:—
A. Carrying the animal and putting him on a chair.
B. Carrying the animal and putting him on a pile of boxes.
C. Carrying the animal and putting him on the top of a sewing machine.
D. Carrying the animal and putting him on the middle of a board 6 feet
long, stretched horizontally across the room, 3 feet from the floor.
E. Carrying the animal and putting him on the side of the cage, head down.
The results are given in Table 13.
The size of the room in which I worked and other practical difficulties
prevented me from extending these experiments. As they stand, no stable
judgments can be inferred from them. It should be noted that in the
successful cases there were no other signs of the presence of the idea
‘food when there’ than the mere going to a certain place. The animal did
not wait at the place more than a second or two, did not look at me or
show any signs of expecting anything.
TABLE 13
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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