42 JOSEPH PETERSON 



success, in this case those acts which bring the animal to the 

 food box. The results follow the series of stimuli and responses 

 which take the animal through the maze. How can the result 

 work backwards? The writer believes that in the foregoing 

 pages he has presented plausible reasons and data to show the 

 absolute inadequacy of frequency and recency laws as the direct- 

 ing factors in maze learning. Frequency fails to give any basis 

 not only for this kind of learning in general but particularly 

 for the specific kinds of results obtained in the experiments 

 considered. In a complex situation like this, frequency explains 

 only how within a certain probability the rat will finally reach 

 the food, but it fails to explain why subsequent trials should 

 be improvements on the first one. It is not clear how recency, 

 as ordinarily understood, can aid the learning. The principle 

 of intensity needs re-interpretation. When several stimuli act 

 on an animal bringing about a series of responses as in this 

 case, the final one of which is the successful one, it appears that 

 somehow, not well understood yet, the various effects of these 

 stimuli hold over into that of the final stimulus and that all 

 together simultaneously act to direct the energy of the animal 

 into the most consistent channels. In the large, these channels 

 offer the least resistance and afford the most complete response. 

 It is in this sense that the successful acts are more intense than 

 others, and thus their effect is greater toward shaping the neural 

 pathways for their repetition and for the gradual elimination 

 of the more inconsistent and tentative responses leading up to 

 them. On this assumption it becomes somewhat comprehensible 

 why the maze is learned to a large extent " as a whole," so 

 that small errors may throw the animal out completely, or 

 at some other part of the maze, when the habit is nearly per- 

 fected. The specific results of the present experiment are also 

 intelligible. These various hold-over effects in the extero- and 

 the proprio-ceptive systems afford the basis of imagery in human 

 behavior, and supply the " large situation " to which one reacts 

 ideally. They may function, so far as we can know, wholly 

 unconsciously or with but vague consciousness in the case of 

 the rat. In the human being habits of responding to separate 

 groupings of these factors may be acquired, and such exciting 

 factors may be aroused indirectly by association. Nothing is 

 gained in psychological explanation by assuming " ideas " to 



