6 JOSEPH PETERSON 



looked as a rule. Watson does not try out his suggestion, or 

 follow it far enough to get to the real difficulty. It is not easy, 

 as Watson rightly admits, 10 to see how the recency principle 

 can help out the situation. No one has given more on this 

 than the mere name. Both recency and frequency fail to explain 

 learning as a gradual change in the way of doing something, 

 involving the elimination of random acts. They do not show 

 what controls an act, but only that if it is controlled, or directed, 

 alike each successive trial it will become easier and more rapid in 

 performamce. 



On the other hand, if different " acts " in a random trial and 

 error process are only more or less tentative expressions of the 

 one general act of getting food, for example, comparable to the 

 out-reachings of the pseudopodia of the ameba, and if in all 

 their changing forms these are related to the main performance 

 by numerous in-going and out-going impulses, it would seem 

 reasonable to suppose that errors of entering blind alleys would 

 be overcome, other things equal, in something like a direct 

 proportion to the length of the latter. This might be expected 

 to hold within certain limits of length, at least. It is not at 

 all implied in this view of learning, let it be clearly kept in mind, 

 that any conscious states, whether or not they are present, are 

 controlling or directing the animal. Indeed, it is just this view 

 that we regard as unfruitful, and for which we are seeking a 

 successful substitute. Instead of covering up the problem by 

 assuming that the animal " perceives relations," or makes 

 " practical judgments," or " has ideas," we are attempting to 

 meet it squarely and to state schematically how the complexity 

 of stimuli in the situation favoring learning can function so 

 that the animal may " learn by results." There can be little 

 question in fact that somehow the animal does learn by results. 

 Our problem is to understand how and by what kind of results. 

 Its solution would seem to have valuable bearings in the way 

 of substituting for current erroneous " social forces " factors 

 (including " pleasure and pain ") used in explaining human 

 conduct, in the absence of better conceptions. 



(or the recency, or both) of running through any unit of the maze be the determ- 

 ining factor in subsequent choices the rat never would learn the maze. As the 

 previous note states a similar tabulation of actual choices by an animal likewise 

 shows the inadequacy of the principles in question. 



10 Op. cil., p. 269. The writer is working, however, with encouraging prospects 

 upon a method of testing the influence of recency, and he is finding that influence 

 much less potent than he had supposed. 



