80 STELLA BURNHAM VINCENT 



aroused in advance of the contact experience, presumably 

 through vision. Not only was the activity revived but also, 

 judging from the essential character of the activity, the sensory 

 experience itself in some form. The behavior in all of its details 

 lends credence to the above assumption. 



This emotional condition is not so marked in all discrimina- 

 tive acts as in this but one well wonders, after watching this 

 process day after day, if on this lower level and in their incep- 

 tion all such acts do not have this emotional setting. According 

 to Head, the discrimination would be the unusual, the more 

 exact, the quick cortical control, imposed upon the slower, more 

 instinctive, habitual, less exact, sensory and affective thalamic. 

 But whether emotion does or does not play a vital part in all 

 such acts, it did in this and therefore has been described as it 

 occurred. 



The general stages then of this act of discrimination are as 

 follows: — The sense of familiarity marks the first stage. In the 

 problem which has been reported the use of electricity really 

 forced the next stage. The first effect of this punishment was 

 an emotional condition which multiplied movements and there- 

 fore greatly increased the contact experiences through feet and 

 sides of body but chiefly through vibrissae. 



The pain caused by the shock became associated with the 

 sight of the plate and probably also with its position. In this 

 way the emotion was evoked in advance of its real cause and 

 judging by the behavior was keener and more vivid when it 

 appeared prospectively than when it was aroused directly. 



The earlier stages of the process which was characterized only 

 by the familiar feeling had led to 60% of the trials being made 

 in the true pathway and hence experiences of inequalities of 

 surface were far more numerous than experiences of plain sur- 

 faces for it must be remembered that the preliminary emotional 

 condition occurred at the safe plate as well as at the others. 



The experiences with the plain surfaces were closely con- 

 nected in time with those of the rough and finally the very 

 strength which had been developing in the latter set it off as 

 different but in this it was helped by the contrast between 

 the two. 



The disassociation was also helped by the vital and different 



