Animal intelligence: Experimental studiesThorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Science
Animal intelligence: Experimental studies
Thorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Animal intelligence; Psychology, Comparative
A cat was in the big box where they were kept (see p. 90) very hungry.
As I had been for a long time the source of all food, the cats had grown
to watch me very carefully. I sat, during the experiment, about eight
feet from the box, and would at intervals of two minutes clap my hands
four times and say, “I must feed those cats.” Of course the cat would at
first feel no impulse except perhaps to watch me more closely when this
signal was given. After ten seconds had elapsed I would take a piece of
fish, go up to the cage and hold it through the wire netting, three feet
from the floor. The cat would then, of course, feel the impulse to climb
up the front of the cage. In fact, experience had previously established
the habit of climbing up whenever I moved toward the cage, so that in the
experiment the cat did not ordinarily wait until I arrived there with the
fish. In this experiment
A = The sense-impression of my movements and voice when giving the signal.
B = The sense-impression of my movements in taking fish, rising, walking
to box, etc.
C = The act of climbing up, with the impulse leading thereunto.
The question was whether after a while A would remind the cat of B, and
cause him to do C before he got the _sense-impression_ of B, that is,
before the ten seconds were up. If A leads to C through a memory of B,
animals surely _can_ have association of ideas proper, and probably often
_do_. Now, as a fact, after from thirty to sixty trials, the cat does
perform C immediately on being confronted by A or some seconds later,
at all events before B is presented. And it is my present opinion that
their action is to be explained by the presence, through association, of
the idea B. But it is not impossible that A was associated _directly_
with the impulse to C, although that impulse was removed from it by
ten seconds of time. Such an association is, it seems to me, highly
improbable, unless the neurosis of A, and with it the psychosis,
continues until the impulse to C appears. But if it does so continue
during the ten seconds, and thus get directly linked to C, we have
exactly a representation, an image, a memory, in the mind for eight of
those ten seconds. It does not help the deniers of images to substitute
an image of A for an image of B. Yet, unless they do this, they have
to suppose that A comes and goes, and that after ten seconds C comes,
and, passing over the intervening blank, willfully chooses out A and
associates itself with it. There are some other considerations regarding
the behavior of the cats from the time the signal was given till they
climbed up, which may be omitted in the hope that it will soon be
possible to perform a decisive experiment. If an observer can make sure
of the animal’s attention to a sequence A-B, where B does not arouse any
impulse to an act, and then later get the animal to associate B with C,
leaving A out this time, he may then, if A, when presented anew, arouses
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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