FREE ESSAY ON ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE

ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE

Philip Weiss
11/22/00
Animal Intelligence 
"Animal Intelligence"
The learning theory of Thorndike represents the original S-R framework of behavioral
psychology: Learning is the result of associations forming between stimuli and responses.
Such associations or habits become strengthened or weakened by the nature and frequency
of the S-R pairings. The classic example of Thorndike's S-R theory was a cat learning to
escape from a puzzle box by pressing a lever inside the box. After much trial and error
behavior, the cat learns to associate pressing the lever (S) with opening the door (R).
This S-R connection is established because it results in a satisfying state of affairs
(escape from the box).
In the article "Animal Intelligence" Edward Lee Thorndike states that the research that
has been done on animal behavior was not sufficient. They only relied on observations and
collected anecdotes. In George Romanes "Animal Intelligence" he gathered observations and
anecdotes from observers around the world to put together his theory on animal
intelligence. According to his theory, the animal possesses a fairly high level of
intelligence. Thorndike did not agree with this and the method of research that Romanes
used. Thorndike did not accept the fact that if there is milk inside the house, the cat
comes every day to get it. He wanted to know what the animal is thinking when he comes.
What is going on in his mind? 
Thorndike's main purpose in studying animal intelligence is to trace back the origins of
humans in general.
Thorndike felt that in order to avoid all these problems it would be more useful to do
experiments on the animal rather than observations and collection of anecdotes. Through
experiments we are able to have control of the stimuli in the environment and we are able
to repeat the procedure more than once to get a better understanding of the occurrences
during each trial. We are therefore also able to see whether the behavior of the animal
is a coincidence, if he learns anything new over each trial or he stays in the same state
as when he began. 
To prove this he did an experiment with a wooden box that had a rope that would open a
door that led to food. A cat was starved and then placed inside the box to see how he
would react to the stimuli presented to him and if he would figure out how to get to the
food. During the first trial the cat reacted with very frantic movements. He clawed and
bit every hole available to him, he banged his head against the roof of the box. After
about eight to ten minutes of this behavior the cat fell by accident on the lever , the
door opened and the cat ran to the food. According to Romane's theory, since the cat has
a fairly high intelligence level he should have learned for the second trial to pull on
the cord immediately when placed in the box. Thorndike found that this was not so. The
second time the cat was placed in the box, it went through the same processes that it
went through the first time. It scratched and bit all the possible holes in the box. Then
after a while it fell on the lever that opened the door to the food. The thing that
Thorndike realized is that the amount of time that it took for the cat to go through the
rituals of biting, clawing, banging his head on the top of the cage and then falling on
the lever decreased with each trial until it reached a point where it would do it almost
immediately after it was placed in the box. Thorndike's theory is that during each trial
there is an association building up in the animals mind. Each trial that association
becomes stronger and stronger until it gets stamped in the animals head exactly what he
has to go through to get to the stage of pressing the lever but the animal does not sit
there and contemplate how he is going to pull of a great escape from the box. The
pleasure that the animal receives when he presses the lever stamps in an association
between the impulse of the animal to respond to the stimuli and his sense impressions
that accompany it. These are the mental events that occur in the animals mind during the
experiments. He adds that the more the response is rewarding the more it gets stamped in
until he responds automatically whenever his sensations are aroused. 
In all of Thorndike's experiments he never observed immediate improvement in the animals
response. The animal never knew right away where the food was and how to get it. Every
time it took a long time and many trials until it was stamped in the cat's head.
Latencies, however did sometimes drop significantly after a recent success but after a
series of these successes the latencies increased as drastically as they decreased.
Another problem Thorndike has with others' observations of animals is that they are not
based on the psychology of animals rather on an abnormal event or a great feat that one
animal out of his whole species is able to achieve. For instance, millions of cats get
stuck in trees and can't get down and nobody blinks an eye but one cat saves its master
by waking it up during a blazing fire and all of the sudden cats become the highest form
of intelligence and the cat gets his picture on the front of every local newspaper. There
is also a bias involved. The ones who observe animals anticipate that there is a great
deal of intelligence in the animal especially if they own it or know the owners
personally and as a result will report faulty and inaccurate information about his
observations. 
J.B Watson who is a behaviorist argues with Thorndike on how to analyze an animal during
each trial. He believes that there is no way to measure an animal's behavior based on its
mental processes because we don't have accurate information on the subject. He states
that the way we tend to determine what the animal is felling during the experiments are
based on how we think we would feel if put in that same situation. We must then look at
actual behaviors of the animal in conjunction with hereditary influence to judge a
certain behavior rather than base it on cognitive processes that we are not able to see
or test. 
Thorndike stated that the animal learns to associate certain behaviors with the
satisfaction of succeeding such that these behaviors become more and more likely to
occur. He called this "Instrumental Learning". The animal learns to produce an
instrumental response that will lead it to "satisfaction".
There are many controversial issues in regard to some of the terms he used in his
writings that were not scientifically accepted because were not words that could be
measured. One of the controversial issues is that Thorndike used the term satisfaction,
which refers to a mental state in the animal and there is no way for us to test mental
states and therefore is not scientific. A second controversy with Thorndike's puzzle box
is that the relation between the lever and the food was not visible to the cat most of
the time. An Austrian psychologists by the name of Kohler believed that Thorndike's
experiment was too complicated for the cat to learn the connection between the CS(lever)
and the US(food). He did a more simplistic experiment to show learning processes. He put
a monkey in a cage and outside the cage he put a bunch of bananas and a stick. All the
monkey had to do was to grab the stick and bring the bananas to him. This does not
disprove Thorndike's method it just introduces a second way of looking at learning. 
I believe that Thorndike's experiment of observing a cat's learning abilities and
responses, in an unfamiliar environment, were he would have to find the rewarding
stimuli, added a great deal to the advancement of behavioral psychology. Through the
experiment with the cat in the box, he was able to show to a certain extent that animals
use a lower level of thinking than humans do. When he placed the cat in the box in each
trial the cat did not sit there and map out how he is going to escape from the box rather
he acted wildly and went through the same "rituals" of biting, clawing and hitting his
head on the top of the cage as he did in the first trial until he fell on the necessary
stimuli (the lever) that would give him the stimuli that is rewarding to him (the food),
which shows that the animal did not use his cognitive processes rather he resorted to the
lower level of thinking which is association. I think that there are pros and cons to
using experiments as opposed to observations. The advantage putting a subject in a
laboratory environment is that he will not act and react the same to stimuli presented to
him as in his natural environment. On the other hand an experiment is most effective when
you are able to control and isolate as many stimuli in the environment as possible and by
doing an experiment in a controlled environment, even though you are never able to
control all of the stimuli around, you have more control than in a subjects natural
environment. I agree with Watson's criticism on Thorndike's method because there is no
real way to scientifically prove something that you are not able to assess and analyze. I
have learned more in depth on Thorndike's "Law of Effect" which states "Responses which
have satisfying consequences are stamped in and those followed by discomfort or annoyance
are stamped out" but this is still inconclusive.