Experimental Study of Associative Processes 89 



slightest difference between their behavior and that of cats 

 4, 10, n, 12 and 13, who were put into the same position 

 without ever having seen 2 escape from it. 6, 7, 5 and 3 

 paid no more attention to the string than they did, but 

 struggled in just the same way. No one, I am sure, who had 

 seen them, would have claimed that their conduct was at all 

 influenced by what they had seen. When they did hit the 

 string the act looked just like the accidental success of the 

 ordinary association experiment. But, besides these per- 

 sonal observations, we have in the impersonal time-records 

 sufficient proofs of the absence of imitation. If the ani- 

 mals pulled the string from having seen 2 do so, they ought 

 to pull it in each individual case at an approximately regular 

 length of time after they were put in, and presumably pretty 

 soon thereafter. That is, if an association between the sight 

 of that string in that total situation and a certain impulse 

 and consequent freedom and food had been formed in their 

 minds by the observation of the acts of 2, they ought to pull 

 it on seeing it, and if any disturbing factor required that a 

 certain time should elapse before the imitative faculty got 

 in working order, that time ought to be somewhere near 

 constant. The times were, as a fact, long and irregular in 

 the extreme. Furthermore, if the successful cases were 

 even in part due to imitation, the times ought to decrease 

 the more they saw 2 do the thing. Except with 3, they in- 

 crease or give place to failures. Whereas 6 and 7, if they 

 had been put in again immediately after their first success- 

 ful trial and from then on repeatedly, would have unques- 

 tionably formed the association, they did not, when put in 

 after a further chance to increase their knowledge by imita- 

 tion, do the thing as soon as before. The case of 3 is not 

 here comparable to the rest because he was given three trials 

 in immediate succession. He was a more active cat and 



