TRANSFER OF RESPONSE IN THE WHITE RAT 7 



chologists are pleased to call, in their advanced stage in 

 human psychology, " concepts," " generalizations," and 

 " abstractions." Psychologists have not hesitated to apply 

 the term " generalized response " to what is included, on 

 the behavior side, under the terms mentioned. Thus to 

 quote Angell(8) : " Concepts of adults may also be considered 

 as forms of generalized motor activity." Gore(9) sets forth 

 something of the same idea. The idea presented is that 

 the essence of such types of behavior after all lies in the 

 fact that one response serves for a multitude of stimuli, 

 situations, objects. The word " man," for instance, serves 

 as a proper and efficient response to a whole group of 

 objects and to each member of that. group. The question 

 •before us in this paper is, when looked at from this point 

 of view, whether we can get experimental data bearing 

 upon this second type of " generalized response " or " trans- 

 fer." Can we actually get well controlled situations where 

 a response learned for one stimulus is transferred to another 

 different stimulus? If so, what are the conditions of such 

 transfer? 



We find simple experimental illustrations in human 

 psychology in the reaction experiments. Here one learns 

 to make a simple response, pressing a key, upon the recep- 

 tion of a certain stimulus, say a visual stimulus. The same 

 response is required upon the reception of a second stimulus 

 of a different kind, say an auditory stimulus. So likewise 

 with a touch stimulus. While such experiments furnish 

 us little data on the conditions of transfer, yet they do 

 suggest methods of procedure. In animal work we find 

 also suggestive data. In Hunter's work(lO) on the auditory 

 sensitivity of the white rat he reports that his animals 

 reacted properly (a given, required, controlled response in 

 all cases the same) when either of the following noises were 

 substituted for the standard whistle: the rush of air through 

 the whistle; sound of the rush of air made with lips, and 

 clapping hands. He found also that animals trained to 

 react to hand clapping reacted successfully to the following 

 noises when these were substituted: rattling of paper, 

 dropping sunflower seed on tin, scratching on wood, drum- 

 ming on table with fingers, etc. Here it may be contended 



