BIOPSYCHOLOGICAL 607 



(III) ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING.— At a lower level than in- 

 telligent learning is what may be called associative learning, when 

 the animal becomes, with more or less vividness, aware of the vital 

 significance of some sight, sound, or odour. We are not referring to 

 instinctive obedience to a specific danger-signal or the hke, but to 

 an association that is learned in the animal's apprenticeship to the 

 life of the woods and mountains and shore. It means much for the 

 animal's success in life to learn what certain sense-impressions stand 

 for — whether danger or food or kin, and to be able to act accordingly. 

 We refer to a grade of behaviour higher than that of the "condi- 

 tioned reflex" to which we shall presently turn. Many a dog, when 

 it hears a particular sound, such as the distant hooting of its master's 

 motor-horn, will behave in a precise way, far above the level of a 

 reflex action. At a given signal certain fishes come to the bank to 

 be fed; when a bird hears a certain note, it becomes excited and 

 runs or flies towards the call. When the dry twigs on the forest floor 

 crackle imder a heavy foot, the squirrel darts up a tree. In the educa- 

 tion of young animals by their parents, this process of establishing 

 associations plays an important part. In the individual lifetime a 

 certain stimulus comes to be associated with (a) the memory or 

 enregistration of a particular previous experience, pleasant or pain- 

 ful, and {b) with a particular course of action. The psychical aspect 

 is seen in the discrimination of the stimulus, e.g. a tell-tale sound 

 from a non-significant one, and in the vividness of the revival of 

 the previous experience. Frequent repetition brings about some 

 degree of automatisation. 



(IV) PRE-INTELLIGENT LEARNING.— At various levels of 

 the Animal Kingdom, from the Protozoa upwards, one sees the 

 pursuance of an apparently somewhat random "trial and error" 

 method, in which the creature, in face of some difficulty, tries its 

 various common movements one after the other, and may thus 

 solve a problem. It is seeking satisfaction or the removal of dis- 

 satisfaction, and it goes through its repertory of movements. Here 

 we have to do with endeavour, but not with intelligence. In any 

 case, it is far below the level of the dehberately purposeful experi- 

 ments made by the chimpanzee in trying to retrieve the fruit out 

 of reach. Intelligence might be inferred if attention were arrested 

 by the movement that proved effective, and if on subsequent 

 occasions the profitless movements were more or less quickly 

 eliminated. One of the lower monkeys wished to get a peanut out 

 of a narrow-necked bottle and tried all manner of imintelligent 

 shakings. Among these there occurred holding the bottle inverted 

 in a vertical position, which of course attained the desired result. 

 But this individual monkey had not the wit to notice what parti- 

 cular movement solved the problem; nor did its fortuitous success 



