What has been referred to as the multiple-choice method was devised by
me three years ago as a means of obtaining strictly comparable objective
data concerning the problem-solving ability of various types and
conditions of animals. The method was first tried with human subjects in
the Psychopathic Hospital, Boston, with a crude keyboard apparatus
which, however, proved wholly satisfactory as a means of demonstrating
its value. It has since been applied by means of mechanisms especially
adapted to the structure and activities of the organisms, to the study
of the behavior of the crow, pig, rat, and ringdove (Yerkes, 1914;
Coburn and Yerkes, 1915; Yerkes and Coburn, 1915). The method has also
been applied with most gratifying results to the study of the
characteristics of ideational behavior in human defectives,--children,
and adults,--and in subjects afflicted with various forms of mental
disease. It is at present being tried out as a practical test in
connection with vocational guidance and various forms of institutional
examination, such as psychopathic hospital and court examinations.
As no adequate description of the method has yet been published to which
I can here refer, it will be necessary to present its salient
characteristics along with a description of the special form of
apparatus which was found suitable for use with monkeys and apes.
The method is so planned as to enable the observer to present to any
type or condition of organism which he wishes to study any one or all of
a series of problems ranging from the extremely simple to the complex
and difficultly soluble. All of the problems, however, are completely
soluble by an organism of excellent ideational ability. For the human
subject, the solution of the easiest problem of all requires almost no
effort, whereas even moderately difficult problems may require many
repetitions of effort and hours or days of application to the task. In
each case, the solution of the problem depends upon the perception of a
certain constant relation among a series of objects to which the subject
is required to attend and respond. Such relations are, for example,
secondness from one end of the group, middleness, simple alternation of
ends, or progressive movement by constant steps from one end of a group
to the other.
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