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.
The Mental Fact in Association
It is now time to put the question as to just what is in an animal’s mind when, having profited by numerous experiences, he has formed the association and does the proper act when put in a certain box. The commonly accepted view of the mental fact then present is that the sight of the inside of the box reminds the animal of his previous pleasant experience after escape and of the movements which he made which were immediately followed by and so associated with that escape. It has been taken for granted that if the animal remembered the pleasant experience and remembered the movement, he would make the movement. It has been assumed that the association was an association of ideas; that when one of the ideas was of a movement the animal was capable of making the movement. So, for example, Morgan says, in the ‘Introduction to Comparative Psychology’: “If a chick takes a ladybird in its beak forty times and each time finds it nasty, this is of no practical value to the bird unless the sight of the insect suggests the nasty taste” (p. 90).
Again, on page 92, Morgan says, “A race after the ball had been suggested through the channel of olfactory sensations.” Also, on page 86 “... the visual impression suggested the idea or representation of unpleasant gustatory experience.” The attitude is brought out more completely in a longer passage on page 118: “On one of our first ascents one of them put up a young coney, and they both gave chase. Subsequently they always hurried on to this spot, and, though they never saw another coney there, reiterated disappointment did not efface the memory of that first chase, or so it seemed.” That is, according to Morgan, the dogs thought of the chase and its pleasure, on nearing the spot where it had occurred, and so hurried on. On page 148 of ‘Habit and Instinct,’ we read, “Ducklings so thoroughly associated water with the sight of their tin that they tried to drink from it and wash in it when it was empty, nor did they desist for some minutes,” and this with other similar phenomena is attributed to the ‘association by contiguity’ of human psychology.
From these quotations it seems fairly sure that if we should ask Mr. Morgan, who is our best comparative psychologist, what took place in the mind of one of these cats of our experiments during the performance of one of the ‘tricks’ he would reply: “The cat performs the act because of the association of ideas. He is reminded by the sight of the box and loop of his experience of pulling that loop and of eating fish outside. So he goes and pulls it again.” This view has stood unchallenged, but its implication is false. It implies that an animal, whenever it thinks of an act, can supply an impulse to do the act. It takes for granted that the performance of a cat who gets out of a box is mentally like that of a man who thinks of going down street or of writing a letter and then does it. The mental process is not alike in the two cases, for animals can not provide the impulse to do whatever act they think of. No cat can form an association leading to an act unless there is included in the association an impulse of its own which leads to the act. There is no general storehouse from which the impulse may be supplied after the association is formed.
Before describing the experiments which justify these statements, it will be worth while to recall the somewhat obvious facts about the composition of one of these associations. There might be in an association, such as is formed after experience with one of our boxes, the following elements:—
1. Sense-impression of the interior of the box, etc.
2. (a) Discomfort and (b) desire to get out.