Animal intelligence: Experimental studiesThorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Science
Animal intelligence: Experimental studies
Thorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Animal intelligence; Psychology, Comparative
Chicks were also tried in several pens where there was only one possible
way of escape to see if they would learn it _more quickly_ when another
chick did the thing several times before their eyes. The method was
to give some chicks their first trial with an imitation possibility
and their second without, while others were given their first trial
without and their second with. If the ratio of the average time of the
first trial to the average time of the second is smaller in the first
class than it is in the second class, we may find evidence of this
sort of influence by imitation. Though imitation may not be able to
make an animal _do_ what he would otherwise _not do_, it may make him
do _quicker_ a thing he would have done sooner or later any way. As a
fact the ratio is _much larger_. This is due to the fact that a chick,
when in a pen with another chick, is not afflicted by the discomfort
of loneliness, and so does not try so hard to get out. So the other
chick, who is continually being put in with him to teach him the way
out, really prolongs his stay in. This factor destroys the value of
these quantitative experiments, and I do not insist upon them as
evidence against imitation, though they certainly offer none for it. I
do not give descriptions of the apparatus used in these experiments or
a detailed enumeration of the results, because in this discussion we
are not dealing primarily with imitation as a slight general factor
in forming experience, but as a definite associational process in the
mind. The utter absence of imitation in this limited sense is apparently
demonstrated by the results of the following experiments.
V was a box 16 × 12 × 8½, with the front made of wire screening and at
the left end a little door held by a bolt but in such a way that a sharp
peck at the top of the door would force it open.
W was a box of similar size, with a door in the same place fixed so that
it was opened by raising a bolt. To this bolt was tied a string which
went up over the top of the edge of the box and back across the box, as
in D. By jumping up and coming down with the head over this thread, the
bolt would be pulled up. The thread was 8½ inches above the floor.
X was a box of similar size, with door, bolt and string likewise. But
here the string continued round a pulley at the back down to a platform
in the corner of the box. By stepping on the platform the door was opened.
Y was a box 12 × 8 × 8½, with a door in the middle of the front, which I
myself opened when a chick pecked at a tack which hung against the front
of the box 1½ inches above the top of the door.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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