Psyc 276 Animal Intelligence 1

Umweg (“Detour”) problem – roundabout methods – detours – circuitous routes [Köhler]“When any of those higher animals, which make use of vision, notice food (or any other objective)

somewhere in their field of vision, they tend—so long as no complications arise—to go after it in a straight line. We may assume that this conduct is determined without any previous experience, providing only that their nerves and muscles are mature enough to carry it out.

“Thus, if the principle of experimentation mentioned in the introduction is to be applied in a very simple form, we may use the phrases ‘direct way’ and ‘roundabout way’ quite literally, and set a problem in place which, in place of the biologically-determined direct way, necessitates a complicated geometry of movement towards the objective. The direct way is blocked in such a manner that the obstacle is quite easily seen; the objective remains in an otherwise free field, but is attainable only by a roundabout route. ...

“Chimpanzees will get round any obstruction lying between them and their objective, if they have sufficient view of the space in which lie the possible detours. The path may lie across flat ground, or over trees and scaffolding, or even up under a roof as long as they can grab hold of something. ... It is only when roundabout methods are tried on the lower animals, and when you see even chimpanzees undecided, any, perplexed to the point of helplessness, by a seemingly minor modification of the problem—it is only then you realize that circuitous methods cannot in general be considered usual and matter-of-course conduct. ...

“Near the wall of a house, a square piece of ground is fenced off so that one side, one metre from the house, is parallel to it, and forms with it a passage two metres long; one end of this passage is cut off by a railing. A mature Canary Isle bitch is brought into this blind alley from direction A (cf. Fig. 2), to B, where she is kept occupied with food, her face towards the railings. When the food is nearly gone, more is put down at the spot C, on the other side of the rail; the bitch sees it, seems to hesitate a moment, then quickly turns at an angle of 180° and is already on the run in a smooth curve, without any interruption, out of the blind alley, round the fence to the new food.

“The same dog, on another occasion, behaved at first in the same way. It was standing at B near a wire fence (constructed as in Fig. 3) over which food was thrown to some distance; the bitch at once dashed out to it, describing a wide bend. It is worth noting that when, on repeating this experiment, the food was not thrown far out, but was dropped just outside the fence, so that it lay directly in front of her, separated only by the wire, she stood seemingly helpless, as if the very nearness of the object and her concentration upon it (brought about by her sense of smell) blocked the ‘idea’ of the wide circle round the fence; she pushed again and again with her nose at the wire fence, and did not budge from the spot.

“A little girl of one year and three months, who had learned to walk alone a few weeks before, was brought into a blind alley, set up ad hoc (two metres long, and one and a half wide), and, on the other side of the partition, some attractive object was put before her eyes; first she pushed towards the object, i.e., against the partition, then looked round slowly, let her eyes run along the blind alley, suddenly laughed joyfully, and in one movement was off on a trot round the corner to the objective.

“In similar experiments with hens, one sees that a roundabout way is not taken as a matter of course, but is quite an achievement; hens, in situations which are much less roundabout than those already described, have been quite helpless; they keep rushing up against the obstruction when they see their objective in front of them through a wire fence, rush from one side to the other all a-fluster, and do not fare better, even when they are familiar with the obstruction (or the fence) and the greater part of the circuitous route, as, for instance, round the little door of their place and through the opening corresponding to it. Different hens do not behave in the same way, and, if the detour is shortened while they are still pushing against the obstacle, it can easily be observed how first one, then another, and so on, stops running up against the obstruction and runs quickly round the curve; but some particularly ungifted specimens keep on running up against the fence a long while even in the simplest predicaments. ... All the hens which I observed thus managed to achieve only very

Psyc 276 Animal Intelligence 2

“straight” roundabout ways (cf. Fig. 4a in contrast to 4b). Apparently the possible detour must not begin with the direction leading away from the objective (cf. as against this the behaviour of the child and the dog above).

“It therefore follows that for those processes which form the basis of this small achievement, variations in the geometrical circumstances are of the greatest importance. ....

“If the experiment has not been made often, there is the additional fact that the moment in which a true solution is struck is generally sharply marked in the behaviour of the animal (or the child) by a kind of jerk: the dog stops, then suddenly turns completely round (180°), etc., the child looks about, suddenly its face lights up, and so forth. Thus the characteristic smoothness of the true solution is made more striking by a discontinuity at its beginning.

“I must explicitly warn my readers against the mistake of thinking that I am implying any supernatural mode of interpreting behaviour: any practiced person can observe this, not only in experiments on animals, but in all others.” Köhler, W. (1917) Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropoiden [The Mentality of Apes]. Berlin: Abhandlungen der Koeniglich Prüssischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

insight or “ah-ha”» Köhler strongly criticized Thorndike’s work, arguing that his apparatus was so artificial that it allowed

only for random behavior on the part of the animal, which Thorndike then took as evidence for the trial-and-error nature of learning; similarly, an animal in a maze can not see the overall design but only each alley in turn, so its only option is to blindly attempt each path

» relational learning—chickens learned to choose the lighter of two grays rather than a particular shadebox problem

With chimpanzees (more often referred to as “Köhler’s apes”), several experiments were done. For the box problem a banana or other desirable food was suspended from the cage top away from the side walls … at a height impossible for the chimp to reach, even by jumping. Several wood boxes were in the large outdoor cage (several times the size of our classroom). Many of the chimps solved this problem by dragging a couple of boxes under the banana, piling them up, and then climbing up on the boxes to reach the fruit.

one bamboo stick problemFor this task the banana was placed outside the bars of the cage … too far for the chimpanzee

to reach it by pushing its arm through the bars. Several bamboo sticks were in the cage. The solution was to take the stick and use it as an extension of the arm to drag the fruit close to the bars … where it could be reached by putting the arm through the bars. Some chimps solved this problem.

two hollow bamboo stick problem“Are the two sticks ever combined so as to become technically useful? This time Sultan is the

subject of experiment. His sticks are two hollow, but firm, bamboo rods, such as the animals often use for pulling along fruit. The one is so much smaller than the other that it can be pushed in at either end of the other quite easily. Beyond the bars lies the objective, just so far away that the animal cannot reach it with either rod. They are about the same length. Nevertheless, he takes great pains to try to reach it with one stick or the other, even pushing his right shoulder through the bars. When everything proves futile, Sultan commits a ‘bad error’ or, more clearly, a great stupidity, such as he made sometimes on other occasions. He pulls a box from the back of the room towards the bars; true, he pushes it away again at once as it is useless, or rather, actually in the way. Immediately afterwards, he does something which, although practically useless, must be counted among the ‘good errors’: he pushes one of the sticks out as far as it will go, then takes the second, and with it pokes the first one cautiously towards the objective, pushing it carefully from the nearer end and thus slowly urging it towards the fruit. This does not always succeed but if he has got pretty close in this way, he takes even greater precaution; he pushes very gently, watches the movements of the stick that is lying on the ground, and actually touches the objective with its tip.

Psyc 276 Animal Intelligence 3

Thus, all of a sudden, for the first time, the contact ‘animal-objective’ has been established, and Sultan visibly feels (we humans can sympathize) a certain satisfaction in having even so much power over the fruit that he can touch and slightly move it by pushing the stick. ... The experiment has lasted over an hour, and is stopped for the present, as it seems hopeless, carried out like this. As we intend to take it up again after a while, Sultan is left in possession of his sticks; the keeper is left there to watch him.

“Keeper’s report: Sultan first of all squats indifferently on the box, which has been left standing a little back from the railings; then he gets up, picks up the two sticks, sits down again on the box and plays carelessly with them. While doing this, it happens that he finds himself holding one rod in either hand in such a way that they lie in a straight line; he pushes the thinner one a little way into the opening of the thicker, jumps up and is already on the run toward the railings, to which he has up to now half turned his back, and begins to draw a banana towards him with the double stick. I call the master: meanwhile, one of the animal’s rods has fallen out of the other, as he has pushed one of them only a little way into the other; whereupon he connected them again.

“The keeper’s report covers a period of scarcely five minutes, which had elapsed since stopping the experiment. Called by the man, I continued observation myself: Sultan is squatting at the bars, holding out one stick, and, at its end, a second bigger one, which is on the point of falling off. It does fall. Sultan pulls it to him and forthwith, with the greatest assurance, pushes the thinner one in again, so that it is firmly wedged, and fetches a fruit with the lengthened implement. But the bigger tube selected is a little too big, and so it slips from the end of the thinner one several times; each time Sultan rejoins the tubes immediately by holding the bigger one towards himself in the left and the thinner one in his right hand and a little backwards, and then sliding one into the other. [Plate III. The illustration is culled from a cinematograph film that was taken a month later in other surroundings, more suitable for photographs] The proceeding seems to please him immensely; he is very lively, pulls all the fruit, one after the other, towards the railings, without taking time to eat it, and when I disconnect the double-stick he puts it together again at once, and draws any distant objects whatever to the bars.” Köhler, W. (1917) Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropoiden [The Mentality of Apes]. Berlin: Abhandlungen der Koeniglich Prüssischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

•• A Sewanee student asked if the chimps had seen a keeper sweeping, moving boxes around or piling them on each other. While, in general, the Gestalts provide lengthy narratives describing their research (for Köhler in his animal studies, often book length), this type of “outside the experiment proper” information is completely missing. This is a major difference between the Gestalt approach and the American behaviorists.

the conceptBoston terrier Siamesecocker spaniel ShetlandSt. Bernard ClydesdaleSaluki Silver Kingbloodhound Norway

Each of the names in column 1 are … dogsEach of the names in column 2 are … not dogs [non-dogs: cat, pony, horse, pigeon, rat]

•• generalization within (the 2) categoriesWhile column 1 are all … column 2 are all …

•• discrimination between categoriesfundamentally, a concept consists of 2 (or more) groups, with a

generalization within each group or category and discrimination between each group

Psyc 276 Animal Intelligence 4

e.g., rats in operant chamber [Dr. Loh Seng Tsai of Tulane]

what is the concept learned by the rats [who never saw more than one stimulus card at a time, hence had a more difficult task than you do]? The concept of “two-ness”

e.g., formation of concepts (Hull, 1920)Chinese characters paired with nonsense syllables – full characters written on separate cards;

12 different radicals/nonsense syllables, one of each in a pack of 12 cardsOn the first pack each card in turn was shown to the subject and the experimenter gave the

nonsense name; in subsequent packs the subject was asked to anticipate the name before the experimenter said it sample items:name radical sample characters

after many trials college students were able to make the correct response (sound), but virtually none of them were able to state the basis for making the sound when asked … basically their response was “I know it when I see it” … learning without awareness [awareness = verbalizing the basis for behavior when requested]

Psyc 276 Animal Intelligence 5

Charles [Robert] Darwin (1809-1882) developed no new ideas—everything was a part of British thought of that time, the mid-19th century British Zeitgeist (Thompson & Robinson, 1979)

• man’s status as part of the animal kingdom as proposed by Darwin caught no thoughtful Victorian by surprise—continuity of development was widely assumed

• members of a species are not identical; vary in subtle but critical ways » competitive advantage for some [nature is “intelligent” in selecting the preferable variation; no individual intelligence or purpose involved]

• Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) suggested (1880) that the individual selects behaviors from random activity in a similar fashion [for their pleasurable consequences rather than any notion of personal survival in order to pass along one’s genes, rather than any concept of survival of the species] » no intelligence, planning, goals

Darwin’s great contribution: data from 5-year cruise on Beagle that clearly supported the ideas put forth … everyone else depended primarily on speculation and reason

Darwin’s undisciplined works with speculative content and polemical tone invited and received criticism of a kindred kind:

Descent of Man (1871)“There is no fundamental difference between man and the

higher mammals in their mental faculties.” do we conclude that animals are brighter than we thought?

leads to Köhler, Yerkes & learning research in Europe do we degrade man’s intellect?

leads to Thorndike & learning research in USA & CanadaThe Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)

George John Romanes (1848-1894)Canadian born, Cambridge educated; mostly private income but part-time position at Univ. Edinburgh; a

physiologist; impressed by Darwin’s writings while a young man; later Darwin gave him all of his notes on animal behavior, thereby choosing Romanes to apply the theory of evolution to the mind as Darwin had applied it to the body

Animal Intelligence (1883) “data” obtained by anecdotal method with fish, birds, domestic animals, monkeys … “tell me about your experiences with …”analyzed these “data” by introspection by analogy: “starting from what I know subjectively of the operations of my own individual mind, I proceed by analogy to infer from the observable activities displayed by other organisms, the fact that certain mental operations underlie or accompany these activities”

introspection: describing the world as actually seen with no “learned interpretations” … see a black rectangle, silver circle, placed together [not a black 3-D ring binder]

•• data collection method: anecdotal method» deficient due to imprecise details one obtains, biased report of story teller [rarely as

thorough –particularly in observing over a lengthy period, using multiple sources– as the case method]

•• data analysis method: introspection by analogy» deficient due both to the problems with introspection and to the assumption that a

human researcher can introspect in the way that an animal would

H[erbert] S[pencer] Jennings (1868-1947) stated that we need more stories of animal stupidity; we already have too many of animal intelligence