Animal intelligence: Experimental studiesThorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Science
Animal intelligence: Experimental studies
Thorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Animal intelligence; Psychology, Comparative
In another set of experiments animals were put in boxes with whose
mechanisms they had had no experience, and from which they might or
might not be able to escape by their own impulsive acts. The object was
to see whether the time taken to form the association could be altered
by my instruction. The results turned out to give a better proof of the
inability to form an association by being put through the act than any
failure to change the time-curve. For it happened in all but one of
the cases that the movement which the animal made to open the door was
different from the movement which I had put him through. Thus, several
cats were put through (in Box C [button]) the following movement: I took
the right paw and, putting it against the lower right-hand side of the
button, pushed it round to a horizontal position. The cats’ ways were
as follows: No. 1 turned it by clawing vigorously at its top; No. 6, by
pushing it round with his nose; No. 7, in the course of an indiscriminate
scramble at first, in later trials either by pushing with his nose or
clawing at the top, settling down finally to the last method. Nos. 2 and
5 did it as No. 1 did. Cat 2 was tried in B (O at back). I took his paw
and pressed the loop with it, but he formed the habit of clawing and
biting the string at the top of the box near the front. No. 1 was tried
in A. I pressed the loop with his paw, but he formed the habit of biting
at it.
In every case I kept on putting the animal through the act every time,
if at the end of two minutes (one in several cases) it had not done it,
even after it had shown, by using a different way, that my instruction
had no influence. I never succeeded in getting the animal to change its
way for mine. Moreover, if any one should fancy that the animal really
profited by my instruction so as to learn what result to attain, namely,
the turning of a certain button, but chose a way of his own to turn
it, he would be deluding himself. The time taken to learn the act with
instruction was no shorter than without.
If, then, an animal happens to learn an act by being put through it, it
is just happening, nothing more. Of course, you may _direct_ the animal’s
efforts so that he will perform the act himself the sooner. For instance,
you may hold him so that his accidental pawing will be sure to hit the
vital point of the contrivance. But the animal cannot form an association
leading to an act unless the particular impulse to that act is present as
an element of the association; he cannot supply it from a general stock.
The groundwork of animal associations is not the association of _ideas_,
but the association of idea or sense-impression with _impulse_.
In the questionnaire mentioned elsewhere, some questions were asked with
a view to obtaining corroboration or refutation of this theory that an
impulse or innervation is a necessary element in every association formed
if that association leads to an act. The questions and answers were:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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