RETROACTIVE ASSOCIATION AND THE ELIMINA- 

 TION OF ERRORS IN THE MAZE 



HELEN B. HUBBERT AND K. S. LASHLEY 



The temporal relation of the different activities which are 

 associated in the formation of a habit seems to have a direct 

 bearing upon the form in which the habit is fixed. Thus in an 

 experiment described by Bohn (Dontchef-Dezeuze, '14), carried 

 out in Pawlow's laboratory, the selection of stimulus and re- 

 sponse by their temporal relation seems established. In this 

 experiment an electrical stimulus was applied to the skin of a 

 dog, eliciting struggling and howling. Following this, food was 

 placed in the animal's mouth and salivary secretion was ob- 

 tained as a result. After this sequence had been repeated many 

 times the only reaction to the electrical stimulation of the skin 

 was the secretion of saliva. Why, in this experiment, was the 

 secretion of the saliva associated with the electrical stimulus 

 and not the struggling and howling with the taste of food? An 

 animal may be trained readily to reject food with the latter 

 reactions in a given situation by the use of punishment after 

 food is taken, 1 so it seems that the temporal order determined 

 which of the stimuli and responses were to become associated. 



In the formation of complex habits it is probable that similar 

 and even more complex temporal factors modify the course of 

 learning. Hachet-Souplet ('13) has stated dogmatically that 

 when a series of actions, leading up to a pleasurable situation, 

 becomes connected into a habit the association occurs first 

 between the activities just preceding the pleasant result and 

 progresses to those more remotely antecedent. This may be 

 called the principle of retroactive association. If it is a fact 

 it has an important bearing upon theories of the mechanism of 

 selection in habit-formation. 



In the work with the conditioned reflex it has been shown that 

 a well established reflex may serve as a basis for the formation 



1 Hachet-Souplet ('14) describes an interesting case of this sort. 



