138 Animal Intelligence 



PERMANENCE OF ASSOCIATIONS 



Once formed, the connections by which, when an animal 

 feels a certain sense-impression, he does a certain thing, 

 persist over considerable intervals of time. With the curves 

 on pages 39 to 58 and 60 to 65 are given in many instances 1 

 additional curves showing the animal's proficiency after an 

 interval without experience. To these data may be added 

 the following : 



The three chicks that had learned to escape through 

 the long labyrinth (involving twenty-three associations) 

 succeeded in repeating the performance after ten days' 

 interval. Similarly the chicks used as imitators in V, W, X 

 and Y did not fail to perform the proper act after an in- 

 terval of twenty days. Cat 6, who had had about a hundred 

 experiences in C (button), had the association as perfect after 

 twenty days as when it left off. Cat 2, who had had 36 ex- 

 periences with C and had attained a constant time of 8 sec- 

 onds, escaped fourteen days later in 3, 9 and 8 seconds, re- 

 spectively, in three trials. Cat i, after an interval of twenty 

 days, failed in 10 minutes to escape from C. The signal 

 for climbing up the front of the cage was reacted to by No. 3 

 after an interval of twenty-four days. No. 10, who had 

 learned to discriminate between 'I must feed those cats' 

 and 'I will not feed them/ was tried after eighty days. It 

 was given 50 trials with the second signal mingled indiscrim- 

 inately with 25 trials with the first. I give the full record of 

 these, 'yes' equalling a trial in which she 'forgot' and 

 climbed up, ' no ' equalling a trial in which she wisely stayed 

 down. Dashes represent intervening trials with the first 



1 See 10 in A, 3 in A, 10 in D ; 10 in C, 4 in C, 3 in C ; 6, 2, 5, 4 in E ; 4 in 

 F; loinH, 3inH; 3, 4, 5, in I; 4 in G, 3 in G; 3 in K; loinL; dog i in N 

 and CC ; dog i in G and O. 



