Modification by Experience 289 



a certain act operates as a direct stimulus, apparently 

 through an inborn nervous connection, to the perform- 

 ance of a similar act by another animal. "If," says Lloyd 

 Morgan, "one of a group of chicks learns by casual experi- 

 ence to drink from a tin of water, others will run up and 

 peck at the water and will themselves drink. A hen teaches 

 her little ones to pick up grain or other food by pecking on 

 the ground and dropping suitable materials before them, 

 the chicks seeming to imitate her actions. . . . Instinc- 

 tive actions, such as scratching the ground, are performed 

 earlier if imitation be not excluded" (507, pp. 166-167). 

 Imitation in this sense is hardly so much a method of learn- 

 ing by experience as a method of supplying experience. 

 An animal may perform an act the first time because, 

 through inherited nervous connections, the sight of another 

 animal's performing it acts as a stimulus. But it will con- 

 tinue to perform the act, in the absence of any copy to 

 imitate, only if the act is itself an instinctive one, like 

 drinking in birds, or becomes permanent by reason of its 

 consequences, just as would be the case if its first perform- 

 ance had been accidental rather than imitative. As a 

 matter of fact, instinctive imitation seems usually to be 

 concerned with actions themselves instinctive. 



Inferential imitation, or what Morgan calls reflective imita- 

 tion, is a different affair. It is the case where an animal, 

 watching another one go through an action and observing 

 the consequences, is led to perform a similar act from a 

 desire to bring about the same result. Such behavior 

 naturally suggests that it is accompanied by some kind of 

 memory idea of the action that is imitated. Now Thorn- 

 dike, in his experiments on chicks, cats, and dogs, found no 

 evidence of this type of imitation. A cat put in a puzzle- 

 box did not learn the way out any sooner for watching, 

 u 



