Animal intelligence: Experimental studies

by Edward L. Thorndike

3. Representation of oneself pulling the loop.

4. Fiat comparable to the human “I’ll do it.”

5. The impulse which actually does it.

6. Sense-impression of oneself pulling the loop, seeing one’s paw in a certain place, feeling one’s body in a certain way, etc.

7. Sense-impression of going outside.

8. Sense-impression of eating, and the included pleasure.

Also between 1 and 4 we may have 9, representations of one’s experience in going out, 10, of the taste of the food, etc. 6, 7 and 8 come after the act and do not influence it, of course, except in so far as they are the basis of the future 3’s, 9’s and 10’s. About 2 we are not at present disputing. Our question is as to whether 3 or 5 is the essential thing. In human associations 3 certainly often is, and the animals have been credited with the same kind. Whatever he thinks, Professor Morgan surely talks as if 1 aroused 9 and 10 and 3 and leaves 5 to be supplied at will. We have affirmed that 5 is the essential thing, that no association without a specific 5 belonging to it and acquired by it can lead to an act. Let us look at the reasons.

A cat has been made to go into a box through the door, which is then closed. She pulls a loop and comes out and gets fish. She is made to go in by the door again, and again lets herself out. After this has happened enough times, the cat will of her own accord go into the box after eating the fish. It will be hard to keep her out. The old explanation of this would be that the cat associated the memory of being in the box with the subsequent pleasure, and therefore performed the equivalent of saying to herself, “Go to! I will go in.” The thought of being in, they say, makes her go in. The thought of being in will not make her go in. For if, instead of pushing the cat toward the doorway or holding it there, and thus allowing it to itself give the impulse, to innervate the muscles, to walk in, you shut the door first and drop the cat in through a hole in the top of the box, she will, after escaping as many times as in the previous case, not go into the box of her own accord. She has had exactly the same opportunity of connecting the idea of being in the box with the subsequent pleasure. Either a cat cannot connect ideas, representations, at all, or she has not the power of progressing from the thought of being in to the act of going in. The only difference between the first cat and the second cat is that the first cat, in the course of the experience, has the impulse to crawl through that door, while the second has not the impulse to crawl through the door or to drop through that hole. So, though you put the second cat on the box beside the hole, she doesn’t try to get into the box through it. The impulse is the sine qua non of the association. The second cat has everything else, but cannot supply that. These phenomena were observed in six cats, three of which were tried by the first method, three by the second. Of the first three, one went in himself on the 26th time and frequently thereafter, one on the 18th and the other on the 37th; the two last as well as the first did that frequently in later trials. The other three all failed to go in themselves after 50, 60 and 75 trials, respectively.

The case of No. 7 was especially instructive, though not among these six. No. 7 had had some trials in which it was put in through the door, but ordinarily in this particular experiment was dropped in. After about 80 trials it would frequently exhibit the following phenomena: It would, after eating the fish, go up to the doorway and, rushing from it, search for fish. The kitten was very small and would go up into the doorway, whirl round and dash out, all in one quick movement. The best description of its behavior is the paradoxical one that it went out without going in. The association evidently concerned what it had done, what it had an impulse for, namely, coming out through that door to get fish, not what it remembered, had a representation of.