Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/75

Rh successful pass at the string, he would often run around to the door, evidently expecting that his act had brought the desired result.

It would seem that in the present series there was a happy conjunction of just those factors needed to call forth imitation. May we not say that these are just the conditions and factors which render the experiment less artificial and less far removed from those natural conditions in which so many have taken it for granted that intelligent imitation did find a large place? The present writer is persuaded that what he needs with other birds and animals is a more or less exact duplication of the conditions which obtained with these crows.

Jim followed the example given by young Crow 1. He did not simply perform an act in the same way as his model did but in that part of the box worked upon as well as the definite things done he was seen to go against an old habit, against that which he was strongly inclined to do. He did so probably because previous methods of his own had brought the desired result.

Without great caution on the part of this older bird, frequent changes in the fastenings on the box, without the incessant playful efforts on the part of the young crow, indeed, without the imperfections in the box which made it possible to open it in an unexpected way, it is difficult to see how such a clear case of imitation could have been obtained. That this is the best series which the present writer has to submit is largely due to results unforeseen but which nevertheless may serve us all the better as proof of that which we were in search of. But it may be said that many of the changes which the Old Crow made in his behavior were simple reversions to a previous method of his own. True this may be in many cases and yet this very point is involved if we analyze the conditions necessary for the appearance of imitation. Where could the idea or impulse of the movement to be made in imitation come from if the animal or child had had no previous experience of its own to use at least as a basis. In an important way this previous experience is just what has not been given to animals by earlier students of imitation. The lack of this previous experience in sufficient amount is perhaps the chief reason for the fact that it is some months–four to six–before the higher stages of imitation appear in the human child.

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 –5