Animal intelligence: Experimental studiesThorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Science
Animal intelligence: Experimental studies
Thorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Animal intelligence; Psychology, Comparative
The three chicks that had learned to escape through the long labyrinth
(involving twenty-three associations) succeeded in repeating the
performance after ten days’ interval. Similarly the chicks used as
imitators in V, W, X and Y did not fail to perform the proper act
after an interval of twenty days. Cat 6, who had had about a hundred
experiences in C (button), had the association as perfect after twenty
days as when it left off. Cat 2, who had had 36 experiences with C and
had attained a constant time of 8 seconds, escaped fourteen days later
in 3, 9 and 8 seconds, respectively, in three trials. Cat 1, after an
interval of twenty days, failed in 10 minutes to escape from C. The
signal for climbing up the front of the cage was reacted to by No.
3 after an interval of twenty-four days. No. 10, who had learned to
discriminate between ‘I must feed those cats’ and ‘I will not feed them,’
was tried after _eighty_ days. It was given 50 trials with the second
signal mingled indiscriminately with 25 trials with the first. I give
the full record of these, ‘yes’ equalling a trial in which she ‘forgot’
and climbed up, ‘no’ equalling a trial in which she wisely stayed down.
Dashes represent intervening trials with the first signal, _to which
she always reacted_. It will be observed that 50 trials put the cat in
the same position that 350 had done in her first experience, although in
that first experience she had had only about a hundred trials after the
association had been perfected. The association between the first signal
and climbing up was perfect after the eighty days.
TABLE 8
=======+========+========+========+========+========
TRIALS | TRIALS | TRIALS | TRIALS | TRIALS | TRIALS
1-7 | 8-17 | 18-27 | 28-35 | 36-42 | 43-50
-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
— | yes | no | — | — | —
— | yes | yes | — | no | —
yes | yes | no | — | no | —
yes | — | no | no | — | —
no | yes | — | no | no | —
— | yes | — | yes | no | no
yes | no | yes | no | no | no
yes | yes | yes | — | — | yes
no | no | yes | no | — | no
no | — | yes | yes | no | no
— | — | no | no | no | no
— | yes | no | no | | no
— | yes | | | | no
| — | | | |
=======+========+========+========+========+========
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