James P. Porter

“ In the experience of the individual animal, as in human experience, there is a constant recurrence of old situations with a slightly new aspect. Tests of the power of inhibition, of analysis, as well as imitation, the writer is constrained to believe find favorable conditions as much in varied relations of the same apparatus as in refinement and multiplication of new apparatus. The same food box used with most of my birds may seem to the reader an undue adherence to the rules of scientific experimentation, but the results we trust will abundantly justify the method adopted. ”

“ We have seen that mimicry and instinctive imitation are predetermined for the individual by the experience of the species. Has it not been rather futile for us to expect that one animal should imitate another in the doing of some act which each individual animal must learn by the "trial and success" method and this only? Most students of animals agree that it is by individual experience that such a thing is first learned. Then here is a test such as pulling a string to open a door to get food, which is extremely artificial from the animal point of view. ”

“ Inasmuch as students of animal psychology have agreed to use intelligence to mean ' 'profiting by experience," and not reason, it would seem that intelligent imitation should be kept apart from the words which seem to imply in the animal mind something which is akin to, if not identical with, reasoning. The writer then proposes, and this is done chiefly because the facts seem to require it, as a third class that of intelligent imitation. ”

“ As will be evident in many of the later series, the experimenter has sought whenever possible, by change to a kind of food more to the liking of some birds present in the experiment, by change in the positions of the food-pan, by changes in location of the strings on the box, by the introduction of strange, more pugnacious, younger, or more active and playful birds; by all these and other means the experimenter has sought to produce rivalry, competition, struggle, fear, new caution, interest and attention and above all a real necessity and opportunity for each animal to do something. ”

“ Spaulding, in testing the learning process in Crayfish, had to do this and all would agree that to do so for tests of imitation would be as difficult as well as more necessary.
Birds would therefore appear to be very good subjects for a study of imitation since at least the higher ones have the olfactory lobes really very little developed and they probably use the sense of smell to small extent. For them the sense of sight is predominant as it is in man. In fact a good argument might be made to show that it plays even a larger role with birds than with almost any other animal. ”

“ It would be natural to suppose that birds of any species would more readily imitate particularly in an instinctive way the actions of those of their own species. A priori a definite act which is to be imitated would be accompanied by more of general suggestiveness if done by one of their own kind. However, intelligent imitation based on so much of individual experience as was the case with this male English Sparrow, it would seem, need not be necessarily limited by the fact that the act is performed by a bird of another species. ”

“ The origin and development of social life in the animal as well as in the human world have long been considered problems by scientists, whether biologists, sociologists, psychologists, or educators. Imitation of some kind or other, all would agree, constitutes one and only one of the chief factors in this problem. ”

“ How artificial it is only those can appreciate who have observed the enormous number of different things birds will do before pulling such a string much less to imitate another's pulling it.
The criterion which is proposed, stated on page 8, makes the test more difficult for the animal. He must change his own method for that of another. All my work with birds would lead me to expect that each species will probably open the door, such as I have used most, in a few limited ways. One feels that the Cowbird will use the beak or stand on the floor and pull with one claw. ”

“ Several English Sparrows who have been very wild have used the same method of flying out from the top of the box and barely alighting on the strings. Yet even this fear may be an incentive to their following a copy set by another bird, and changing from their former method to the one to be imitated. If other higher animals such as House Mice were worked with, I should deem it very necessary to make it certain that odor could in no way be used as a constantly leading stimulus for the animal doing the imitating. With birds such precaution is hardly necessary. ”

“ Without, however, maintaining that the results which we have obtained in our study of birds require us to go quite so far, it is hoped that the present and later papers will afford ample proof of the fact that in learning an action through imitation many species of birds do not imitate in the same way as human adult.
No student at all in touch with recent tendencies and problems in Psychology or in the study of Animal Behavior can question for a moment the possible practical value of a study of imitation in animals. ”

“ Did the two male Orioles who were submitted to all the above tests show any signs of any mental power above that of intelligence or the "trial and success" method of learning? It should be said in this connection that to infer from an isolated single instance that any animal reasons or does not reason is a method hardly to be tolerated in our present science of Animal Behavior. In fact, the study of human reason requires a series of tests with the same problem or situation from day to day. ”

“ Such a reply would be understood to mean that all imitation is identical with that which conscious or possibly self-conscious adult human beings find in themselves. Perhaps a more scholarly and certainly a more academic response to such a query as the above would be to ask in turn "what kind of imitation do you want to know about?" With such a way of acting, or of getting things done, as that of imitative functioning which is felt to occupy such a large place in both animal and human mental development there are very probably different stages or levels. ”

“ The work of the student of animals will certainly be found to be valuable for the Experimental Pedagogy of which we hear so much at present. Not so much that direct application of conclusions will be possible as that methods and conditions of experimentation which one must perforce use with animals in order to determine accurately just the factors involved will be found at least of suggestive value to the student of Child Psychology, Experimental Pedagogy, and, most of all, Social Psychology. ”

“ The writer hopes at some later time to show that much of human learning is analogous, not necessarily homologous, with animal learning. Both learn by "trial and success," the happy accident and the painful result method. Indeed man does not reason by far as much as our popular notions concerning this question would lead us to suppose. If this is true, then imitation in children and the higher animals ought to bear some instructive analogies. ”

“ Were it possible to come to the bird with an act for it to imitate, which would appeal as natural, spontaneously and repeatedly as these call notes and songs do, then we should probably get intelligent imitation as unmistakably and easily. This is difficult, but the writer feels that with the long series of tests under the conditions imposed and the demands of the more difficult criterion, we may be more certain of getting examples of intelligent imitation ”

“ The birds are free at all times to move around the box. No bird has ever been confined in order that it might see another first open the door and then be liberated and allowed to try for itself. Such a method requires a break in the time which is certainly more difficult for the animal to cross mentally than it is for man. ”

“ As indications of the degree to which the bird analyzes the apparatus it is working with, as an index therefore of the extent to which the animal is conscious, they are most significant and important. ”

“ The writer hastens to say, however, that he really believes that any classification of the above kind does not adequately represent the facts. The observed facts in the animal are of all stages of instinctive and intelligent and in the child these two are not left behind when they emerge into the reflective. In this instinctive basis we find a satisfactory explanation of the facts concerning imitation in bird songs. There is probably no distinction to be made here between that which is instinctive from that which is intelligent. ”

“ They have learned not to do instead of to do. Thus they fail in thirty minutes in the first trial and the door is opened in the second trial by accident. In the third the male Sparrow succeeds in thirty-one minutes after many trials. The manner in which the door was opened by him is of interest. The uncritical observer might call it imitation, for he flies out from the front upper edge, turns, and in his flight seizes the strings. This is very similar to the method of the female Sparrow, but I have had frightened Sparrows behave in this same way when they were alone with this box. ”

“ At the beginning of the present series there was but one male Oriole present. The young English Sparrows, though they were partly reared by hand, were so wild that they did not approach the food-box at all in the early tests. It is true they could not be expected to cope successfully with the mature birds of the larger species, and yet if at all hungry they could at times take care of themselves surprisingly well. ”

“ They, of course, liked the bird food, and, indeed, in one instance one mouse went so far as to open the door before the birds came down to the box.
Having taken prisoner two of these offenders I decided to test them with apparatus similar to that used by Small in his experiments I and II (Amer. Jour. Psy., XI, p. 135) . The results may be gathered into a table like the following: [2]
Table I
Results of tests with two House Mice giving time taken for the larger or smaller, or both, to find a way through the sawdust into a box in which food was placed. ”

“ One would naturally expect that conditions favoring imitation might very well interfere with a uniform rate of learning, and vice versa. If two birds fight or pay attention to each other, then neither can at the same time be working to open a box by pulling strings. ”

“ The keen rivalry and almost equal fighting ability, the change in the female Sparrow's condition of health and the food more to her liking were particularly suited to bring out some evidence of imitation. ”

“ Usually in learning tests with animals it is unfortunate if the fastenings of the food-box fail to work as easily or in the same way as they have in the past. Yet as we shall see directly for these Orioles and later for the Crows, such an accident in tests on imitation is really a favorable occurrence. ”

“ But what advantage is there in an animal which uses more exclusively the eye than the sense of smell as the source of stimuli which guide it to action? Obviously if our experimental apparatus were devised to appeal to the sense of smell, and if we as observers could detect that the animal, instead of acting on the odor stimulus, responded rather to the model set by another, then the odor guided animal w r ould be the equal of those in which sight is predominant. ”

“ It is understood, of course, that each time after the door was opened I placed the food out next the door-sill so that Jim could get it. He would probably starve before entering the box. On August 5th one of two young crows that were taken from the nest about the first of June and reared by hand was turned into the cage with Jim. The accompanying figure 20, gives a good idea of the tameness of these crows, and yet they were, when a month or so old, somewhat more fearful than as shown in the photograph. If a stranger fed them they might refuse to eat from his hand until very hungry. ”