PRIMACY IN THE LEARNING OF A PIG 69 



tinue to take the wrong pathway as the persistency of the 

 impulse to go from O by the pathway that last was successful 

 from O to the food. It is interesting to note that the pathway 

 taken at the first feeding of each morning was always the same 

 as the pathway taken last on the previous day. 



An example from the writer's experience of an attempt to 

 break a certain habit of forgetting may help explain the prin- 

 ciple involved. On two successive evenings he forgot to ex- 

 tinguish the gas light in the cellar after he had made the fire. 

 On the third evening as he closed the cellar door behind him, 

 on entering the kitchen he remembered that he had left the 

 light burning and he at once returned to extinguish it. For 

 about a score of evenings he went through exactly the same 

 process of forgetting and correcting. Just as soon as the thought 

 of the light suggested itself when the fires had been made, the 

 proper reaction to the light was elicited. Again, it is not so 

 much the attraction of a stimulus that determines a certain 

 reaction as it is the precedence and strength of that reaction 

 to that stimulus. 



The results of this experiment are significant in showing the 

 tremendous force and persistency of the first of a series of habits. 

 Of course humans are not pigs but fundamentally the methods 

 of learning for pigs and people are about the same. Therefore, 

 these records suggest the gravity of the "first impression," and 

 emphasize the importance of correct reactions at the outset 

 in any kind of learning. 



It is to be regretted that the time for each reaction was not 

 recorded and that some device was not provided whereby the 

 exact part of K over which the pig jumped in his search or 

 the food could be determined, and that the experiment was 

 not continued for a much longer time. While these results are 

 not at all conclusive they probably suffice to warrant further 

 study along the same lines on small children as well as on animals. 



