The signal experiment is duplicated thousands of times in the education of every human being. He learns the meaning of signs and slight indications; that is, he learns to recognize important facts by aid of signs that are of themselves unimportant. We shall have much to say on this matter in a later chapter on perception. Man learns signs more readily than such an animal as the rat, in part because the human being is naturally more responsive to visual and auditory stimuli. Yet the human being often has trouble in learning to read the signs aright. He assumes that a bright morning means good weather all day, till, often disappointed, he learns to take account of less obvious signs of the weather. Corrected for saying, "You and me did it", he adopts the plan of always saying "you and I", but finds that this quite unaccountably brings ridicule on him at times, so that gradually he _may_ come to say the one or the {313} other according to obscure signs furnished by the structure of the particular sentence. The process of learning to respond to obscure signs seems to be about as follows: something goes wrong, the individual is brought to a halt by the bad results of his action, he then sees some element in the situation that he had previously overlooked, responds to this element, gets good results, and so--perhaps after a long series of trials--comes finally to govern his action by what seemed at first utterly insignificant. Trial and error learning, though often spoken of as characteristically "animal", is common enough in human beings. Man learns by impulsively doing in some instances, by rational analysis in others. He would be at a decided disadvantage if he could not learn by trial and error, since often the thing he has to manage is very difficult of rational analysis. Much motor skill, as in driving a nail, is acquired by "doing the best you can", getting into trouble, varying your procedure, and gradually "getting the hang of the thing", without ever clearly seeing what are the conditions of success. Human Compared With Animal Learning Fairly direct comparisons have been made between human and animal learning of mazes and puzzles. In the maze, the human subject has an initial advantage from knowing he is in a maze and has to master it, while the rat knows no more than that he is in a strange place, to be explored with caution on the odd chance that it may contain something eatable, or something dangerous. But, after once reaching the food box, the rat begins to put on speed in his movements, and within a few trials is racing through the maze faster than the adult man, though not so fast as a child. Adults are more circumspect and dignified, they make less speed, cover less distance, but also make fewer false moves {314} and finish in less time. That is in the early trials; adults do not hold their advantage long, since children and even rats also reach complete mastery of a simple maze in ten or fifteen trials.