Experimental Study of Associative Processes 133 
ciation. The cat would then be like a man who on seeing 
a door should feel only the impulse to stick the key in the 
hole, but then, seeing the door plus a key in the hole, should 
feel the impulse to turn the key and so on through. My 
cats did not give any signs of this, so that with them it was 
either a complex association or an irregular happening of 
the proper impulses. Probably the same was the case with 
Dog 1. Cats 10, 11, 12 in L knew all the movements 
separately before being experimented on with the combina- 
tion. Cats 2, 3, 4 had had some experience of D, which 
worked by a string something like the string part of K. The 
string in K was, however, quite differently situated and 
required an altogether different movement to pull it. Since 
further No. 2, who had had ten times as much experience 
in D as 3 or 4, succeeded no better with the string element 
of K than they, it is probable that the experience did not 
help very much. All else in all these compound associations 
was new. At the same time the history of these animals’ 
dealings with these boxes would not fairly represent that of 
animals without general experience of clawing at all sorts 
of loose or shaky things in the inside of a box. These 
cats had learned to claw at all sorts of things. The 
time-curves were taken as in the formation of the other 
associations, and, in addition, the order in which the animal 
did the several things required was recorded in every trial. 
In the case of all the curves, except the latter part of 3 
in G, one notices a very gradual slope and an excessive 
irregularity in the curve throughout. Within the limits 
of the trials given the animals are unable to form a perfect 
association and what advancement they make is very slow. 
The case of 3 in G is not an exception to this, but a proof of 
it. For 3 succeeded in making a perfect association, by 
accidentally hitting on a way to turn the compound asso- 
