446 JOHN B. WATSON 



some tendency on the experimenters' part to control their 

 experiments, and to consider in some measure the work of 

 other investigators. 



Shepherd '" repeats on the Rhesus monkey two of the imi- 

 tation tests made by Hobhouse and by Watson. Pushing 

 food from a glass tube was the first test given. The animals 

 failed to show any signs of imitating the movement of the ex- 

 perimenter. The simple act of pulling in food with a T-rake 

 was the next tried. Six of the animals failed in it. Two of 

 the monkeys seemed after a few days to give some evidence 

 of imitation. They learned to imitate the experimenter in 

 pushing out the rake, perfectly, but the pulling in of the food 

 with the rake remained imperfect to the last. A third and 

 new type of experiment was next tried. A banana was sus- 

 pended out of reach of the animal. By pushing a sliding pole 

 arranged to work in a horizontal plane two feet six inches from 

 the floor, to the right or to the left until it lay in the same vertical 

 plane as the banana, and then mounting upon it, the animal 

 could reach the food. The monkey longest tested in this ex- 

 periment slowly improved, apparently by virtue of the tuition 

 afforded him by the operator. 



Birds. The work of Porter '^' is concerned with learning in 

 several species of birds not hitherto extensively studied, e. g., 

 the junco, numerous varieties of sparrows, Baltimore orioles, 

 blue jays, bluebirds, and crows. The author's chief interest in 

 the work centers around the problem of imitation. His method 

 of testing imitation differs from the methods of other investi- 

 gators, in that the " imitator " was never confined. Porter 

 allowed several of the birds to work together, displacing each 

 other at the task whenever opportunity afforded. He states 

 that this method introduces such motives as rivalry, competi- 

 tion, struggle, fear, " new caution," interest and attention. The 

 writer's description of his method is unclear. His preliminary 

 work gave him a new criterion of imitation, which I quote in 

 full : ' ' Early in the present work the writer began to make 

 use of the criterion of the presence of imitation which may be 

 stated somewhat as follows: Bird No. i is induced to open a 

 box, which may be done in one of several different ways. Bird 

 No. 2, by the means indicated above, is allowed to supplant 

 No. I. The effect of this different method of opening on the 



