168 L. W. COLE 



The second paper, that of Gregg and McPheeters, had no 

 other object than "to demonstrate the inadequacy of Cole's 

 experiment." (P. 258.) 



They reconstructed my " card-display er," except that the 

 levers were not screened from the view or touch of the animal 

 and a system of strings and pulleys was added which the animal 

 could also see. 



Then they gave the two raccoons two days training on the 

 levers alone without any cards attached to them. (P. 245.) One 

 of the two animals, Jack, failed utterly to discriminate. "Further 

 training might have developed discriminative reactions in his 

 case but time did not permit a continuance of the tests." (P. 

 246.) Jill discriminated between the two series on some basis, 

 but Jill also "soon acquired the habit of standing close to the 

 levers and touching her nose to them as they appeared." (P. 

 247.) Here, the reader will doubtless say that all analogy with 

 my experiment ends. I should agree to this so far as the method 

 and apparatus are concerned but it seems easier to change those 

 than to change the nature of the raccoon, for there is a startling 

 agreement between the behavior of their one successful animal 

 and my four. 



Let us find this agreement. In the training series Gregg and 

 McPheeters kept two constant factors. (1) A "normal" order 

 of lever positions used, according to their respective distances 

 from the animal. (2) They always presented the levers in 

 series of three. Jill reacted to the order of lever positions chiefly, 

 perhaps (p. 249), but she responded partly to the threes, for 

 they say (p. 252), "Positive reactions of food getting may be 

 stimulated successfully by any of the following groups, 1-2-3, 

 1-3-3, 1-2-2, 2-2-2, or 1-1-1. Likewise, inhibition, or negative 

 responses may be stimulated by either group 3-3-3, or 2-2-2. 

 The nature of the stimulus is relative to the character of the group 

 with which it is alternated." One cannot help asking, why 

 continue to alternate by threes only, unless they meant to teach 

 the animal to respond to alternate threes ? Why not alternate 

 by sixes as I did ? This was one of my "controls," which they 

 have overlooked. 



Jill reacted to the two constant factors. In my experiments 

 only the color (and brightness) of the cards was kept constant. 

 My four animals responded to that. In both the Chicago 



