Imitation in Dogs
Here the method was not to see if imitation could arouse more quickly an act which accident was fairly likely to bring forth sooner or later, but to see if, where accident failed, imitation would succeed.
3 was found to be unable of himself to escape from box BB1, and was then given a chance to learn from watching 1. The back of box BB1 was torn off and wire netting substituted for it. Another box with open front was placed directly behind and against box BB1. No. 3, who was put in this second box, could thus see whatever took place in and in front of box BB1 (O at back, high). The record follows:—
Table 6 (a)
| Dog 3 Imitating Dog 1 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Times 1 did | Times 3 saw | Times probably 3 saw | Time in alone | ||
| 30 | 7 | 14 | 3.00 | F | |
| After 1 Hour | 35 | 9 | 14 | 3.00 | F |
| After 1 Hour | 10 | 3 | 3 | 5.00 | F |
| After 24 Hours | 20 | 6 | 8 | ||
| 30 | 8 | 13 | 6.00 | F | |
| After 48 Hours | 25 | 8 | 11 | 8.00 | F |
| 25 | 6 | 12 | 6.00 | F | |
| 25 | 9 | 7 | 10.00 | F | |
| After 24 Hours | 30 | 10 | 11 | 40.00 | F |
| Total times surely and possibly seen,— | 66 | 93 | |||
A similar failure to imitate was observed in the case of another simple act. No. 1, as may be seen on [page 60], had learned to escape from a pen about 8 by 5 feet by jumping up and biting a cord which ran from one end of the pen to the other and at the front end was tied to the bolt which held the door. Dogs 2 and 3 had failed in their accidental jumping and pawing to hit this cord, and were then given a chance to learn by seeing 1 do so, escape, and, of course, be fed. 1 always jumped in the same way, biting the cord at the same place, namely, where a loose end from a knot in it hung down 4 or 5 inches. 2 and 3 would either be tied up in the pen or left in a pen at one side. They had a perfect chance to see 1 perform his successful act. After every twenty or thirty performances by 1, 2 and 3 would be put in alone. It should be remembered that here, as also in the previous experiment and all others, the imitators certainly wanted to get out when thus left in alone. They struggled and jumped and pawed and bit, but they never jumped at the cord. Their records follow:—
Table 6 (b)
| Dog 2 Imitating Dog 1 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Times 1 did | Times 2 saw | Times Doubtful | Time 2 was in alone | ||
| 30 | 9 | 11 | 10.00 | F | |
| After 1 Hour | 30 | 10 | 9 | 10.00 | F |
| After 48 Hours | 25 | 8 | 8 | ||
| After 1 Hour | 10 | 3 | 4 | 9.00 | F[11] |
| After 24 Hours | 30 | 8 | 12 | 15.00 | F |
| After 1 Hour | 30 | 9 | 12 | 15.00 | F |
| After 48 Hours | 20 | 7 | 6 | 10.00 | F |
| 20 | 8 | 7 | |||
| After 48 Hours | 30 | 6 | 8 | 15.00 | F |
| After 24 Hours | 15 | 2 | 4 | 10.00 | F |
| Total times surely and possibly seen,— | 70 | 81 | |||
Table 6 (c)
| Dog 3 Imitating Dog 1 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Times 1 did | Times 3 saw | Times Doubtful | Time 3 was in alone | ||
| 30 | 10 | 10 | 10.00 | F | |
| After 1 Hour | 30 | 9 | 10 | 10.00 | F |
| After 1 Hour | 15 | 6 | 4 | ||
| After 24 Hours | 30 | 9 | 11 | 15.00 | F |
| After 24 Hours | 30 | 10 | 12 | 15.00 | F |
| After 1 Hour | 30 | 8 | 9 | 10.00 | F |
| After 48 Hours | 20 | 6 | 7 | 40.00 | F |
| After 1 Hour | 20 | 6 | 5 | ||
| After 48 Hours | 30 | 8 | 9 | 15.00 | F |
| After 24 Hours | 15 | 3 | 4 | 20.00 | F |
| Total times surely and possibly seen,— | 75 | 81 | |||
Another corroborative, though not very valuable, experiment was the following: Dog 3 had been taught for the purpose of another experiment to jump up on a box and beg when I held a piece of meat above the box. I then caused him to do this 110 times (within two days) in the presence of 1. Although 1 saw him at least 20 per cent of the times (3 was always fed each time he jumped on the box), he never tried to imitate him.
It seems sure from these experiments that the animals were unable to form an association leading to an act from having seen the other animal, or animals, perform the act in a certain situation. Thus we have further restricted the association process. Not only do animals not have associations accompanied, more or less permeated and altered, by inference and judgment; they do not have associations of the sort which may be acquired from other animals by imitation. What this implies concerning the actual mental content accompanying their acts will be seen later on. It also seems sure that we should give up imitation as an a priori explanation of any novel intelligent performance. To say that a dog who opens a gate, for instance, need not have reasoned it out if he had seen another dog do the same thing, is to offer, instead of one false explanation, another equally false. Imitation in any form is too doubtful a factor to be presupposed without evidence. And if a general imitative faculty is not sufficiently developed to succeed with such simple acts as those of the experiments quoted, it must be confessed that the faculty is in these higher mammals still rudimentary and capable of influencing to only the most simple and habitual acts, or else that for some reason its sphere of influence is limited to a certain class of acts, possessed of some qualitative difference other than mere simplicity, which renders them imitable. The latter view seems a hard one to reconcile with a sound psychology of imitation or association at present, without resorting to instinct. Unless a certain class of acts are by the innate mental make-up especially tender to the influence of imitation, the theory fails to find good psychological ground to stand on. The former view may very well be true. But in any case the burden of proof would now seem to rest upon the adherents to imitation; the promising attitude would seem to be one which went without imitation as long as it could, and that is, of course, until it surely found it present.
Returning to imitation considered in its human aspect, to imitation as a transferred association in particular, we find that here our analytical study of the animal mind promises important contributions to general comparative psychology. If it is true, and there has been no disagreement about it, that the primates do imitate acts of such novelty and complexity that only this out-and-out kind of imitation can explain the fact, we have located one great advance in mental development. Till the primates we get practically nothing but instincts and individual acquirement through impulsive trial and error. Among the primates we get also acquisition by imitation, one form of the increase of mental equipment by tradition. The child may learn from the parent quickly without the tiresome process of seeing for himself. The less active and less curious may share the progress of their superiors. The brain whose impulses hitherto could only be dislodged by specific sense-impressions may now have any impulse set agoing by the sight of the movement to which it corresponds.
All this on the common supposition that the primates do imitate, that a monkey in the place of these cats and dogs would have pulled the string. My apology for leaving the matter in this way without experiments of my own is that the monkey which I procured for just this purpose failed in two months to become tame enough to be thus experimented on. Accurate information about the nature and extent of imitation among the primates should be the first aim of further work in comparative psychology, and will be sought by the present writer as soon as he can get subjects fit for experiments.
In a questionnaire which was sent to fifteen animal trainers, the following questions were asked:—
1. “If one dog was in the habit of ‘begging’ to get food and another dog saw him do it ten or twenty times, would the second dog then beg himself?”
2. “In general is it easier for you to teach a cat or dog a trick if he has seen another do it?”
3. “In general do cats imitate each other? Do dogs? Do monkeys?”
4. “Give reasons for your opinion, and please write all the reasons you have.”
Five gentlemen (Messrs. R. C. Carlisle, C. L. Edwards, V. P. Wormwood, H. S. Maguire and W. E. Burke) courteously responded to my questionnaire. All are trainers of acknowledged reputation. To these questions on imitation four replied.
To the first question we find the following answers: (a) “Most dogs would.” (b) “Yes; he will very likely do it. He will try and imitate the other dog generally.” (c) “If a young dog with the mother, it would be very apt to.... With older dogs, it would depend very much upon circumstances.” (d) “He would not.”
To 2 the answers were: (a) “Very much easier.” (b) “It is always easier if they see another one do it often.” (c) “This would also depend on certain conditions. In teaching to jump out of a box and in again, seeing another might help, but in teaching something very difficult, I do not think it would be the case.” (d) “It is not.”
To 3 the answers were: (a) “Yes. Some. More than either dogs or cats.” (b) “Yes. Yes. Yes.” (c) “In certain things, yes; mostly in those things which are in compliance to the laws of their own nature.” (d) “No. No. Yes, they are born imitators.”
The only definite answer to question 4 was: “Take a dog or cat and close them up in a room and go in and out several times, and you will find that they will go to the door and stand up on their hind legs with front paws on the door knob and try to open the door to get out. I could also give you a hundred more such reasons.” This was given by (b).
The replies to a test question, however, go to show that these opinions regarding imitation may be mistaken. Question 8 was: “If you wanted to teach a cat to get out of a cage by opening an ordinary thumb latch and then pushing the door, would you take the cat’s paw and push down the thumb piece with it and then push the door open with the paw, or would you just leave the cat inside until it learned the trick itself?” The second is certainly the better way, as will be seen in a later part of this paper, and pushing the latch with the cat’s paw has absolutely no beneficial influence on the formation of the association, yet (a) and (b) both chose the first way, and (c) answered ambiguously. Further, the only reason given is, of course, no reason at all. It proves too much, for if there were such imitation as that, my cats and dogs would surely have done the far simpler things required of them. I cannot find that trainers make any practical use of imitation in teaching animals tricks, and on the whole I think these replies leave the matter just where it was before. They are mere opinions—not records of observed facts. It seems arrogant and may seem to some unjustifiable thus to discard testimony, to stick to a theory based on one’s own experiments in the face of these opinions. If I had wished to gain applause and avoid adverse criticism, I would have abstained from upholding the radical view of the preceding pages. At times it seems incredible to me that the results of my experiments should embody the truth of the matter, that there should be no imitation. The theory based on them seems, even to me, too radical, too novel. It seems highly improbable that I should be right and all the others wrong. But I cannot avoid the responsibility of giving what seems to my judgment the most probable explanation of the results of the experiments; and that is the radical explanation already given.