164 L. W. COLE 



outlined. When the conditions of his experiment demanded that 

 the animals go to an electric bulb, whose light had been extin- 

 guished some seconds before, in order to execute a successful 

 reaction, the rats and the dogs oriented toward the light, either 

 with the whole body, or at least faced in its direction. They 

 kept this orientation during the period of delay in so many of 

 their correct responses that this "motor attitude" evidently 

 served to bridge the time gap between the disappearance of the 

 light and the release of the animal. Consequently their "motor- 

 attitude" accounts for the success of the rats and dogs. The 

 raccoons and the children did not even face the light in so great 

 a proportion of their successful responses that the "motor- 

 attitudes" hypothesis breaks down completely, as an explanation 

 of their behavior. 



As a result of this outcome of the experiments, Hunter (p. 80) 

 decides that, "Some intra-organic (non-orientation) factor not 

 visible to the experimenter must be assumed in order to explain 

 a significant number of the correct reactions of the raccoons 

 and all of the successful reactions of the children. These cues 

 fulfilled an ideational function." (Italics mine.) And again 

 (p. 72), "As we have indicated, such a mechanism would apply 

 only to the non-orientation cues used by the raccoons and children. 

 The type of function here involved is ideational in character. 

 By applying the term "ideas" to these cues, I mean that they 

 are similar to the memory idea of human experience so far as 

 function and mechanism are concerned. They are the residual 

 effects of sensory stimuli which are retained and which may be 

 subsequently reexcited. The revival, moreover, is selective and 

 adaptive to the solution of a definite problem, and when aroused, 

 they function successfully as a necessary substitute for a definite 

 component of the objective stimulus aspect of the problem." 

 He has already said that the effective component of the stimulus 

 was the light. Unless he denies, then, a visual content to this 

 "factor," it is a visual, imageless thought. But since he does 

 deny it a representative content, though it has a representative 

 function, he terms it "sensory thought," though the stimulus 

 has been absent twenty-five seconds in the longest delays of 

 the raccoons. This "sensory thought" then becomes the image- 

 less thought of current discussion, by the genetic reversal of 

 current opinion on that subject that I have mentioned above. 



