Animal intelligence: Experimental studiesThorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Science
Animal intelligence: Experimental studies
Thorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Animal intelligence; Psychology, Comparative
After No. 1 and No. 3 had both reached a point where both could hardly
be gotten to leave me and go back into their cages or down to the floor
of the room, where they evidently enjoyed being held by me, they still
did not climb upon me. The idea of clinging to me was either absent or
impotent to cause them to act. What they did do was, in the case of
No. 1, to jump about, pawing around in the air, until I caught an arm
or leg, to which stimulus he had by dint of the typical sort of animal
association learned to react by jumping to my arm and clinging there; in
the case of No. 3, to stand still until I held my arm right in front of
him (if he were in his cage) or to come and stand on his hind legs in
front of me (if he were out on the floor). In both cases No. 3’s act was
one which had been learned by my rewarding his impulses. I often tried,
at this period of their intimacy with me, this instructive experiment.
The monkey would be clinging to me so that I could hardly tear him away.
I would do so, and he would, if dropped loose from me, make no efforts to
get back.
I have already mentioned my failure to get the animals to put out their
right hands through the netting after they had long done so with their
left hands. With No. 3 I tried putting my fingers through and poking the
arm out and then making the movement with it. He profited little if any
by this tuition. Had I somehow induced him to do it himself, a few trials
would have been sufficient to get the habit well under way.
Monkey No. 1 apparently enjoyed scratching himself. Among the stimuli
which served to set off this act of scratching was the irritation from
tobacco smoke. If any one would blow smoke in No. 1’s face, he would
blink his eyes and scratch himself, principally in the back. After a
time he got in the habit of coming to the front of his cage when any one
was smoking and making such movements and sounds as in his experience
had attracted attention and caused the smoker to blow in his face. He
was often given a lighted cigar or cigarette to test him for imitation.
He formed the habit of rubbing it on his back. After doing so he would
scratch himself with great vigor and zest. He came to do this always
when the proper object was given him. I have recounted all this to show
that the monkey enjoyed scratching himself. _Yet he apparently never
scratched himself except in response to some sensory stimulus._ He was
apparently incapable of thinking ‘scratch’ and so doing. Yet the act was
quite capable of association with circumstances with which as a matter
of hereditary organization it had no connection. For by taking a certain
well-defined position in front of his cage and feeding him whenever he
did scratch himself I got him to always scratch within a few seconds
after I took that position.
GENERAL MENTAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE MONKEYS
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