Licence: In copyright
Credit: An introduction to comparative psychology. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.
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![3OT after having abundant opportunity to realize that one signal meant food at the bottom of the cage and another none, a monkey would not act from the obvious inference and consistently stay up or go down, as the case might be, but would make errors such as would be natural if he acted under the growing influence of an association between sense-impression and impulse or sense-impression and idea, but quite incomprehensible if he had compared the two signals and made a definite inference. We find that, after experience with several pairs of signals, the monkeys yet failed when a new pair was used to do the obvious thing to a rational mind—viz., to compare the two, think which meant food, and act on the knowledge directly. . . . The monkeys learn quickly, it is true, but not quickly enough for us to suppose the presence of [free, or analytic] ideas, or the formation of associations among them. For if there were such ideas they should in the complex acts do even better than they did. The explanation then is a high degree of facility in the formation of associations of just the same kind as we found in the chicks, dogs, and cats.” Mr A. J Kinnaman has made valuable and interesting observations on the “ Mental Life of two Macacus rhesus Monkeys in Captivity.” * Some of these had for their object to test how far the monkeys could discriminate between the forms of vessels and establish associations between form and food contained or not contained therein. In his summary of the results of these observations he saysf that “the monkeys are able to discriminate these forms and to associate food with them consecutively. The associations are not formed by a single trial, but come about more or less gradually through much repetition. It is easier to form an association de novo than to break an established one and American Journal of Psychology, vol xiii. pp. 98-148, 173-218 (1902) t Page 37 of Reprint](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21523964_0321.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
