Mental Development in the Child and the Race

Appendix C [1]: 1. On Profiting by Experience and Imitation

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We may illustrate in the field of individual experience. Soon after birth a young chick begins to learn as we say 'by experience.' He pecks instinctively at all objects of appropriate size, and by trial learns those which are good to eat and those which should be avoided. How can this be called imitative? In the first place, we may say there is in consciousness only the visual image of the object, and the native reaction of pecking follows upon it. The result of this is to give the chick either a good or a bad taste. In the former case the experience of the good taste becomes associated with the sight of the object -- say a caterpillar -- so that at future meetings with the same sort of caterpillar, the instinctive tendency to peck is reinforced by the imitative tendency to repeat the good taste. This reinforcement tends to modify and even to supersede the original instinctive manner of reacting, as is readily seen in the way the expression of the instinct of pecking is modified by the experience. In the other case -- that of a bad taste, let us say, using Professor Lloyd Morgan's [2] example of the taste of a

(472) cinnabar caterpillar -- the effect of imitation is the reverse. With the sight of the worm now comes up by association the bad taste. The imitative reaction is now to avoid the taste; this tends to keep the instinct of pecking in check; and by repetition gradually suppresses it altogether in the particular case of this worm. But now further, in both cases, the visual presentation of the caterpillar stands by association in the place of the taste, as the terminus of the appropriate reaction, which thus loses its original character as a reflex and also its acquired character as an imitation. The case may be taken as a typical one; since it illustrates, first, the acquisition of experience by the use of native reactions; second, the modification and differentiation of these native reactions by imitation and association; and third, the continued use of these modified reactions in connection with the original objective stimuli, through substitution.

And the full genetic application of the theory would account for the existence of the native pecking reflex in the chick as a selection of variations coincident with imitative accommodations found useful to individuals. [3]

Notes

  1. In the foreign editions this is matter added on p. ago, to which it may be considered a footnote, illustrating the formulation there given in Italics.
  2. Habit and Instinct, pp. 41 f. I may also illustrate this principle by replying to a criticism by Professor Lloyd Morgan of the definition of imitation given above, i.e. a reaction which tends to repeat or reinstate its own stimulus. Professor Morgan cites the chick which crouches or runs away when seeing others do so; this is imitative, although not reproducing the chick's stimulation (in that it cannot see its own actions) but only the 'onlooker's' (loc. cit., p. 168). The answer is that in such cases there is an imitative reproduction by the chick of its own movement sensations which are associated with the sight of the equivalent movements in others. The latter (visual) stimulations are substituted in whole or part for the muscular sensations. Accordingly the action does reproduce both the chick's stimulation (muscular) and the onlooker's (visual). This makes untenable Professor Morgan's distinction (loc. cit., p. 170 f.) between 'imitation' (instinctive) and 'copying' (intelligent reproduction by attention to the copy), although it is often convenient to observe it.
  3. Cf. also the cases given above, Chap. X., § 3.

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