Experimental Study of Associative Processes 139 



signal, to which she always reacted. It will be observed 

 that 50 trials put the cat in the same position that 350 had 

 done in her first experience, although in that first experience 

 she had had only about a hundred trials after the association 

 had been perfected. The association between the first 

 signal and climbing up was perfect after the eighty days. 



TABLE 8 



All these data show that traces of the connections once 

 formed are very slow in being lost. If we allow that part 

 of the time in the first trial in all these cases is due to the 

 time taken to realize the situation (time not needed in the 

 trials when the association is forming and the animal is 

 constantly being dropped into boxes), we may say that the 

 association is as firm as ever for a considerable time after 

 practice at it is stopped. How long a time would be re- 

 quired to annul the influence of any given quantity of 

 experience, say of an association which had been gone 

 through with ten times, I cannot say. It could, if profitable, 



