Methods in Animal Psychology

At the Beginning of Learning Studies There Was the Maze

“…While Small's interest was in studying learning, Kline's attention was at first attracted by the "food-box-finding" capacity of rats which, being gnawers, had to be studied "under the hunger impulse, free from fear, and, as far as possible, under natural conditions" [25]. In fact, in the conviction that the natural method and the experimental one "are necessary to a more abundant ingathering of facts" [28], he adopted an epistemological approach to the research on animals' learning that ranged from careful and continuous observations of naturally occurring behaviours to laboratory experimental observations involving mazes which, however, would inhibit the animals' ability to act freely. The idea for the second approach came from his 1897 research on chicks' "sickness for home", which involved reading Association in Animals, a chapter of Morgan's Introduction to Comparative Psychology, where the author explained the use of little boxes similar to traps to study the ways in which rats searched for food in out-of-the-way places, and observing an investigation conducted in 1897 in the Department of Biology at Clark by Colin C. Stewart, whose "methods, apparatus, and techniques were both interesting and instructive and made a decided impression" upon Kline.…”

“…Kline's box was 8 inches long, 7 inches wide, 6 inches deep, with sides of wire, a glass top and a wooden bottom [28]. The box was raised above the level of the floor by two supporting strips 1 1/2 inches thick ( Figure 6).…”

“…It was 18 inches long, 14 inches wide and 14 inches deep; one side was made of wire, one end of glass and the rest of wood. The rats were placed in the home box several days before the experiments to become familiar with their surroundings [28]. After a series of 13 observations, Kline expressed his doubts about the possibility of establishing the associative chain in a very stable and clear form, since the rats "seldom begin digging at the proper place, sometimes will begin holes in several different places, and they will not dig at all until they have made several examinations of the box" [28].…”

Thorndike's puzzle boxes

“…Although Thorndike (18, p. 412) compared his application of this general method to his own experimental work with mammals, he still left room for the impression that he thought of the procedure independently of Lubbock. 6 In any event, it fit in with his own interests, for it involved both instinct (desired object) and adaptation, which later came to be called learning.6 …”

E. L. Thorndike and the origins of animal psychology: On the nature of the animal in psychology.

“…We deliberately do not use the term comparative psychology because a great deal of animal research carried on in the discipline was not truly comparative, even though it may have gone under that label. At the same time, serious attempts to compare species of animals were discussed, if not actually carried out in practice, and Linus Kline at Clark University wrote two papers in 1899 outlining the content of a laboratory course in comparative psychology (Kline, 1899a(Kline, , 1899b. By retaining the older term, animal psychology, we mean to include all psychological research carried on primarily with nonhuman mammals (see Dewsbury, 1992).…”