Berry, Imitation in White Rats. • 357 



what may, in lack of a better term, be called inferential imitation. 

 By this I mean merely: learning to do a thing from seeing another 

 do it, the purposive association ol another's action with a desired 

 end. For example, not one of the eight rats that might have 

 learned to open the door of Box II by seeing another rat do it, 

 ever thus profited by such experience. Each rat learned the task 

 for himself, and learned it by doing it. On the other hand, imita- 

 tion of simple actions is of frequent occurrence. Very often if one 

 rat begins digging all are eager to dig m the same place; if one 

 runs over the box, over the box they all go. . . . This simple 

 form of imitation depending on the immediate functional con- 

 nection between sensory and motor centers in a lower level — like 

 the frown of a three months baby when the nurse frowns — covers 

 all the cases of imitative action I have observed in the course of 

 these experiments."^ 



Thorndike, after a study of the cat, chick and dog under exper- 

 imental conditions, arrived at the same conclusion as Small, 

 namely: that all the cases of supposed voluntary imitation in these 

 animals are nothing more than instances of instinctive and auto- 

 matic imitation. At the conclusion of his experiments on imita- 

 tion he says: "It seems sure from these experiments that the 

 animals were unable to form an association leading to an act from 

 having seen the other animal, or animals, perform the act in a 

 given situation Not only do animals not have asso- 

 ciations accompanied, more or less permeated and altered, by 

 inference and judgment; they do not have associations of the 

 sort that may be acquired from other animals by imitation."^ 



Concerning imitation in monkeys, Thorndike says: "Nothing 

 in my experience with these animals then favors the hypothesis 

 that they have any general ability to learn to do things from seeing 

 others do them."^ 



KiNNAMAN, in his experiments with two rhesus monkeys, failed 

 to find any indications of intelligent imitation of human beings. 

 Yet in his study of imitation of oneanimal by another hesucceeded, 

 unlike Thorndike, in getting positive results. After he had tried 

 in vain to teach the female monkey to pull a plug out of one end 



'Small. Mental Processes of the Rat. American Journal of Psychology, Vol Ii, p. 162. 1900. 

 ^Thorndike. Animal Intelligence. Psychol. Review, Monograph Supp., Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 62. 1898. 

 ^Thorndike. The Mental Life of the Monkeys. Psychol. Review Monograph Supp., Vol. 3, No. 5; 

 p. 42. 1901. 



