EFFECT OF LENGTH OF BLIND ALLEYS ON ^L\ZE LEARNING 3 



procedure is unfair, and our only purpose here is to point out 

 that there are real difficulties involved such as may give trouble 

 to even an experienced behaviorist. 



The problem must be conceived in some other way, and in 

 terms of stimulus and response as Watson has rightly insisted. » 

 Elsewhere the writer has attempted a statement of the general 

 problem in a form more acceptable for experimentation.^ The 

 general thought in mind, whatever the degree of success of its 

 statem.ent may have been, was this: Response is never, in 

 the case of learning, at least, a reaction to a single stimulus. 

 The afferent impulse never begins at a given receptor as the 

 result of stimulus by a single object and thence passes into 

 m.otor channels from only one particular afferent fiber. The 

 situation in all learning is vastly more complex. A complication 

 of external stimuli is nearly always to be reckoned with; then 

 again, the afferent impulses from these stimuli are greatly 

 determined in their relative effects on response by impulses from 

 the proprio- and the entero-ceptive systems; and, in addition, 

 the responses resulting are to a large extent determined by 

 the general conformation of the organism. Dift'erent forms of 

 animals have different action s^'stems, for example. The 

 pleasantness or unpleasantness of an act is only an inner indica- 

 tion as to whether the response, forced by the complex inner 

 organization (inherited and acquired) and the ■ outer circum- 

 stances, or stimuli, is or is not in general harmony with the 

 conformiation of the organism. The question of explanation 

 may resolve itself, then, wholly into one of the physical and 

 physiological circumstances. It was then suggested that all such 

 factors as recency, frequency, and intensity of stimuli, which 

 may be conceived as involving only a single tract, are in them- 

 selves inadequate to account for learning. Indeed, they may 

 serve in all cases outside of mere chance associative connections 

 only as secondary^ aids to learning. In the usual cases certain 

 stimuli and their immediate effects continue for a time and 

 operate synchronously with others so that the response is a 

 resultant of these various circumstances. It may tentatively 

 tend this way and that, but will complete itself in the way that 

 is on the whole most consistent, when evers-thing is taken into 



^ Behavior, p. 257. 



' Peterson, Jos. Completeness of Response as an Explanation Principle in 

 Learning. Psychol. Rev., 1916, 23, pp. 153-162. 



