Experimental Study of Associative Processes 115 



me come with fish. I then went through the same process 

 as with 3 and 4, but at intervals of 60 to 90 seconds instead 

 of 1 20. After 90 such trials it occasionally climbed up a 

 little way, but though 135 trials in all were given, it never 

 made the uniform and definite reaction which 3 and 4 did. 

 It reacted, when it reacted at all, at from 5 to 9 seconds after 

 the signal. Whether age, weight, lack of previous habitual 

 climbing when I approached, or a slowness in forming the 

 association made the difference, is uncertain. 



Dog i was experimented on in the following manner : I 

 would put him in a big pen, 20-10 feet, and sit outside facing 

 it, he watching me as was his habit. I would pound with a 

 stick and say, "Go over to the corner." After an interval 

 (10 seconds for 35 trials, 5 seconds for 60 trials) I would go 

 over to the corner (12 feet off) and drop a piece of meat 

 there. He, of course, followed and secured it. On the 6th, 



connections. So for a cat to get a distinct controllable percept of a loop, 

 or of its own clawing or nosing or pulling, it must have the capacity to an- 

 alyze such elements out of the total gross complexes in which they inhere, 

 and also certain means or stimuli to such analysis. 



This capacity or tendency the cats and dogs do, in my opinion, possess, 

 though in a far less degree than the average child. They also suffer from 

 lack of stimuli to the exercise of the capacity. Their confinement, for the 

 most part, to the direct sensory experience of things and acts, is due in part 

 to the weakness of the capacity or tendency of their neurones to act in great 

 detail, and in part to the lack of such stimuli as visual exploration of things 

 in detail, manual manipulation of the same thing in many ways, and the iden- 

 tification of elements of objects and acts by language. They get few free 

 ideas because they are less ready than man to get them under the same con- 

 ditions and because their instinctive behavior and social environment ofi'er 

 conditions that are less favorable. The task of getting an animal to have 

 some free ideational representative of a red loop or of pushing up a button 

 with the nose may be compared with that of getting a very stupid boy to 

 have a free ideational representative of acceleration, or of the act of sound- 

 ing th. The difference between them and man which is so emphasized in 

 the text, though real and of enormous practical importance, is thus not at 

 all a mysterious gap or trackless desert. We can see our way from animal 

 to human learning. 



