Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/77

Rh intelligent imitation. Most have made intelligent imitation synonymous with "reflective," "intentional," "voluntary," "persistent" and hence this wide separation was very natural and even necessary. 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.

(4) Reflective, Intentional or Voluntary. This class involves an analysis of which, as can be shown, the bird is not capable. At least the observations which I have made would seriously call it in question. Such are those errors which have occurred in almost every one of the series described pulling the strings repeatedly with the door already open, the indirect method used by the White-throated Sparrow, the errors of the Bluebird even in the Memory series, the errors and following up of misleading acts by the Orioles and Crows, etc. A fuller discussion of the significance of these facts would be both interesting and profitable in affording us an insight into bird mind, but it is hardly necessary here.

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. 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