The period of confinement, as punishment for wrong choices, was
increased from thirty seconds to sixty seconds on April 26. But there is
no satisfactory evidence that this favored the solution of the problem.
Work on May 4 was interrupted by a severe storm, the noise of which so
distracted the monkey that he ceased to work. Consequently, observations
were interrupted on the completion of trial 132, and on May 5, the
series was begun with setting 3. On this date, eighteen trials were
given in succession, and in only one of them did a mistake occur. Since
the ten trials numbered 133 to 142 were correct, Skirrl was considered
to have solved problem 1, and systematic training was discontinued.
On the following day, as a measure of the extent to which the animal had
learned to select the first door at the left no matter what its position
or the number of doors in the group presented, a control series was
given in which the settings differed from the regular series of
settings. These supplementary settings are presented at the bottom of
table 1 together with the records of reaction in ten trials.
Since in only six of these ten control settings was the first choice
correct, it is scarcely fair to insist that the animal was reacting on
the basis of an ideational solution of the problem. Rather, it would
seem that he had learned to react to particular settings. A careful
study of all of the data of response, together with notes on the varied
behavior of the animal during the experiments, justifies the statement
that Skirrl's solution of problem 1 was incomplete and unreliable. It
was highly dependent upon the particular situation, or even the
particular door at the left end of the group, and slightly if at all
dependent upon anything comparable to the human idea of first at the
left of the group.
This particular series of observations has been described and discussed
in some detail in order to make the chief points of method clear. It
will be needless, hereafter, to refer explicitly to many of the
characteristics of reaction or to the important points in the
construction of tables which have been mentioned.
A graphic representation of Skirrl's learning process in problem 1 is
presented in figure 18. The irregularities are most striking, and fairly
indicate the erraticness of the animal. The curve is based upon the data
in next to the last column of table 1, that is, the column presenting
the errors or wrong first choices in each series of trials.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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