RATS AND MEN 349 



behavior pattern, which characterizes habit in our 

 common use of the term. 



Now, of course, the acquisition of new habits, 

 whether simple or complex, involves a change in the 

 structural organization. Hahit/ormation is modifiable 

 behavior, but we do not ordinarily call it a habit un- 

 less the modification of pattern persists and reappears 

 whenever the individual "is confronted by the ap- 

 propriate stimulus." But many new patterns of ex- 

 plicit and implicit behavior actually appear which are 

 not thus fixed and stabilized, and to enlarge the con- 

 notation of habit formation to include every case of 

 modifiable behavior, as Watson appears to do, is a 

 violation of common usage which leads to (or results 

 from ?) an oversimplification of human behavior pat- 

 terns. 



That which is most characteristic of human cor- 

 tical activity is just that flexibility or plasticity of 

 organization which facilitates the formation of in- 

 numerable transient associational patterns which 

 have no enduring quality. In advance of any overt 

 act we "think through" many provisional solutions 

 of a problem of conduct, discarding one after another 

 before the right course of overt action is found. These 

 imaginary acts which are conceived only to be re- 

 jected are not habits any more than are the rat's aim- 

 less wanderings before he has acquired a problem-box 

 habit. These particular associational patterns may 

 never again appear. It is the capacity to do this sort 



