Experimental Study of Associative Processes 133 



elation. The cat would then be like a man who on seeing 

 a door should feel only the impulse to stick the key in the 

 hole, but then, seeing the door plus a key in the hole, should 

 feel the impulse to turn the key and so on through. My 

 cats did not give any signs of this, so that with them it was 

 either a complex association or an irregular happening of 

 the proper impulses. Probably the same was the case with 

 Dog i. Cats 10, n, 12 in L knew all the movements 

 separately before being experimented on with the combina- 

 tion. Cats 2, 3, 4 had had some experience of D, which 

 worked by a string something like the string part of K. The 

 string in K was, however, quite differently situated and 

 required an altogether different movement to pull it. Since 

 further No. 2, who had had ten times as much experience 

 in D as 3 or 4, succeeded no better with the string element 

 of K than they, it is probable that the experience did not 

 help very much. All else in all these compound associations 

 was new. At the same time the history of these animals' 

 dealings with these boxes would not fairly represent that of 

 animals without general experience of clawing at all sorts 

 of loose or shaky things in the inside of a box. These 

 cats had learned to claw at all sorts of things. The 

 time-curves were taken as in the formation of the other 

 associations, and, in addition, the order in which the animal 

 did the several things required was recorded in every trial. 

 In the case of all the curves, except the latter part of 3 

 in G, one notices a very gradual slope and an excessive 

 irregularity in the curve throughout. Within the limits 

 of the trials given the animals are unable to form a perfect 

 association and what advancement they make is very slow. 

 The case of 3 in G is not an exception to this, but a proof of 

 it. For 3 succeeded in making a perfect association, by 

 accidentally hitting on a way to turn the compound asso- 



