Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/78

68 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. It is considerations such as these which seem to demand a change of method in order that we obtain attention and interest from the animals, make our experiments more natural, and use a criterion which is more rigid so that what we have left, after we have rejected all that does not measure up, shall be really true.

As is evident from the detailed results, we do get examples of intelligent imitation. I do not call it voluntary, reflective, rational, or intentional. If animals are intelligent but not rational, this is all that we should expect. Such imitation is as stupid, as blindly dictated by accident and satisfaction and discomfort, and as impulsive as the intelligent act per se.

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.

The writer has three children. One is now two years old, another nine years and another eleven. Child psychologists record the fact that imitation appears first in a noticeable way about the fifth month. They mean, of course, the appearance of reflective, or better perhaps, intelligent imitation. I have several observations on the youngest child for the fifth month and thereafter which show clearly as it seems to me, that her imitations took the form of those things, or closely similar to experiences, which I had noted she had been having in an entirely spontaneous way. She imitated the nine-year-old in producing a high tone long drawn out. But it was not until after several repetitions that she knew she was doing so. This knowledge was indicated by the quite marked change in facial expression. So with a half dozen other cases in which there were pretty clear signs of imitation. All were based on previous experience, however. It has been observed often, as no doubt has been done by many others, that the baby shows much more interest and attention to what is done by the sister nine years of age than to the behavior of adults.

After the child referred to above had performed the imitation a few times, each performance being followed by all kinds of approval by one or more adults, and renewed efforts to elicit more, there were signs of a consciousness on the child's part