Experimental Study of Associative Processes 89 
slightest difference between their behavior and that of cats 
4, 10, 11, 12 and 13, who were put into the same position 
without ever having seen 2 escape from it. 6, 7, 5 and 3 
paid no more attention to the string than they did, but 
struggled in just the same way. No one, Iam sure, who had ~ 
seen them, would have claimed that their conduct was at all 
influenced by what they had seen. ‘When they did hit the 
string the act looked just like the accidental success of the 
ordinary association experiment.) But, besides these per- 
sonal observations, we have in the impersonal time-records 
sufficient proofs of the absence of imitation. If the ani- 
mals pulled the string from having seen 2 do so, they ought 
to pull it in each individual case at an approximately regular 
length of time after they were put in, and presumably pretty 
soon thereafter. That is, if an association between the sight 
of that string in that total situation and-a certain impulse 
and consequent freedom and food had been formed in their . 
minds by the observation of the acts of 2, they ought to pull 
it on seeing it, and if any disturbing factor required that a 
certain time should elapse before the imitative faculty got 
in working order, that time ought to be somewhere near 
constant.! The times were, as a fact, long and irregular in. 
the extreme. Furthermore, if the successful cases were | 
even in part due to imitation, the times ought to decrease 
the more they saw 2 do the thing. Except with 3, they zn- 
crease or give place to failures. Whereas 6 and 7, if they. 
had been put in again immediately after their first success- 
ful trial and from then on repeatedly, would have unques- 
tionably formed the association, they did not, when put in 
after a further chance to increase their knowledge by imita- 
tion, do the thing as soon as before. The case of 3 is not 
here comparable to the rest because he was given three trials 
in immediate succession. He was a more active cat and 
