The Act of Creation (82 page)

 

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 towards 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 connects them again. [1]

 

Henceforth Sultan never had any difficulty in connecting two rods;
and later on even three.

 

 

At first sight, Sultan's achievement appears not as an integration of
existing skills, but as the invention of a totally new one. However,
commenting on the keeper's report, Köhler says: (my italics) 'The keeper
emphasized the fact that Sultan had
first of all connected the sticks
in play and without considering the objective
[the banana]. The
animals are constantly poking about with straws and small sticks in holes
and cracks in their play, so that it would be more astonishing if Sultan
had never done this [i.e. poking the thinner rod into the hole of the
other], while playing about with the two sticks.' [2]

 

 

Thus the discovery again followed the familiar pattern of a playful
habit being connected with a blocked matrix, with chance acting as
a trigger. Later on, a third matrix was added: Sultan had learned
long ago to sharpen sticks by biting off splinters, so that they
could be used to poke in keyholes; now this skill was used to make
two sticks fit together. Obviously, Sultan would never have invented
this sophisticated method of tool-making if each of the three component
skills (raking, poking, sharpening) had not been pre-existing items of
his habit-repertory. The more familiar and well exercised each of the
matrices, the more likely it is that the animal will solve the problem
and, other things being equal, the less it will depend on the helping
hand of chance. (In the case of the two bamboo rods which 'happened'
to fit each other -- a chance which the animal will rarely encounter in
the woods -- we have an example of 'guided learning': the experimenter
serves as a match-maker in lieu of the favourable chance event; the rest
is up to the pupil.)

 

 

 

Uniform Factors in Learning

 

 

Sultan's original achievements cannot be explained either by stamping-in,
or by spontaneous inspiration out of the blue; they are integrations
of existing, flexible skills, of previously unconnected codes of
behaviour into more complex codes of a higher order. In conditioning and
rote-learning, the new code has to be formed more or less from scratch,
more or less bit by bit. This 'drilling in' is a gradual, cumulative
process; whereas the bisociation of two matrices appears as a sudden
fusion. But in between these opposite extremes we find a graded series
of learning methods, with certain basic features common to all. Let me
enumerate a few of these common features.

 

 

The chimpanzee, straining to reach a banana behind the bus,
remembers
the stick lying out of sight; he runs to get it and uses
it as a rake. This has been mentioned in the early Gestalt literature as
one of the criteria of insight learning. But memory enters into
all
learning processes. Thus retention in delayed reaction tests has been
shown to last in cats from three to thirteen hours, in chimpanzees up
to forty-eight hours. [3] Another feature which we find in all types
of conditioning and learning, from Pavlov upward, is
expectancy and
anticipatory behaviour
. Once the stage of initial bewilderment or
frustrated rage is passed, and the animal has embarked on 'learning to
learn', random trials are superseded by less random 'fumbling tries'; and
these in turn by hypotheses. At the 'fumbling' stage, Sultan's behaviour
in the stick-connecting experiment shows no more insight than the cat's:
his fetching of the wooden box and attempts to push one stick with the
second, were quite inappropriate. On the other hand, however, we have met
with plenty of examples of comparable fumblings among human geniuses --
of wild guesses and inappropriate tries preceding the act of discovery. If
we remember that Kepler spent seven years of trial and error, pursuing
false inspirations and wrong hypotheses before the discovery of his
First and Second Laws, we are led to realize the subtleties and wide
applications of the try-method -- and how completely wrong it is to
equate it with blind random behaviour. The range of learning by trial
and error extends from relatively haphazard tries through the whole
graded series, to the relative certainty of inductive inference. On
the lower reaches the trials are explicit and often temperamental,
like the frantic attempts of Thorndike's cats to get out of the box; on
the higher reaches, they assume more and more the character of implicit
hypothesis -- Adams' cat moving its head up and down as it 'works out'
the means of getting at the liver suspended from the string. Lastly,
at the top of the series, the inventor toys with an idea in his head
before taking the more explicit step of trying out several alternative
sketches on paper; after which he may proceed to making a rough model --
an even more explicit, but nevertheless merely symbolic try. The writer,
groping for the right adjective, will sample several with his literary
taste-buds; even the Lord Almighty, according to Genesis, proceeded by
trial and error, as witnessed by the painful episode of the Flood.

 

 

 

Criteria of Insight Learning

 

 

So far, then, we have a continuous series of learning methods, where the
amount of required stamping-in decreases in proportion to the animal's
ripeness for the experimental task. But, according to the contentions
of the Gestalt school, there is a decisive break in the continuity of
the series which puts insightful learning into a category apart from
other methods of learning; and this break is said to be reflected in
the animal's characteristic behaviour at the moment the true insightful
solution occurs. In this view, Sultan's trial-and-error behaviour was
merely a
preliminary
to the true solution, which emerges with
dramatic suddenness and all in a piece; whereas in trial-and-error
learning it emerges gradually.

 

 

The chief descriptive characteristics of 'insight' which have been
proposed by various authors are as follows: (a) dramatic suddenness;
(b) 'the appearance of a complete solution with reference to the whole
layout of the field' [4]; (c) the smooth, unhesitating manner in which
the solution is 'suddenly, directly and definitely' [5] carried out;
(d) the solution of the problem precedes the actual execution of it
[6]; (e) the solution is retained after a single performance; (f)
novelty of the solution. [7] It is furthermore generally assumed that
'insight' is closely related to, if not synonymous with, intelligence and
understanding and, by implication, that trial-and-error learning is not
so or to a lesser degree so. This last point, however, I shall discuss
later; first let us turn to the purely
descriptive
aspects of
'insight learning'.

 

 

When Köhler's experiments are discussed, the authors usually select
the star performances of Sultan, and it is often overlooked that these
were rather in the nature of rare limit cases. In the experiment I am
going to describe, a young chimpanzee, Koko, was faced with the problem
how to get a banana hung high from the wall. The only solution was to
push a wooden box underneath the banana and to climb on the box. Though
Koko is described by Köhler as 'just as gifted as Sultan', it took
him no less than nineteen days to learn this -- whereas he had learned
to rake in a banana with a stick in a few minutes. The use of sticks
is part of the chimpanzee's repertory of habits -- but there are no
wooden boxes lying about in the forest. However, before the experiment
was started, Koko was given a small wooden box as a toy; 'he pushed
it about and sat on it for a moment'. He was then removed to another
cage and in his absence the banana was suspended from the wall, three
or four yards away from the wooden box (the italics are Köhler's:
by 'objective' he means banana):

 

Koko . . . first jumped straight upwards several times towards the
objective, then took his rope in his hand, and tried to lasso the prize
with a loop of it, could not reach so far, and then turned away from
the wall, after a variety of such attempts, but without noticing the
box. He appeared to have given up his efforts, but always returned to
them from time to time. After some time, on turning away from the wall,
his eye fell on the box: he approached it, looked straight towards
the objective, and gave the box a slight push, which did not,
however, move it; his movements had grown much slower; he left the
box, took a few paces away from it, but at once returned, and pushed it
again and again with his eyes on the objective, but quite gently,
and not as though he really intended to alter its position. He turned
away again, turned back at once, and gave the box a third tentative
shove, after which he again moved slowly about. The box had now been
moved 10 centimetres in the direction of the fruit. The objective was
rendered more tempting by the addition of a piece of orange (the non
plus ultra of delight!), and in a few seconds Koko was once more at
the box, seized it, dragged it in one movement up to a point almost
directly beneath the objective (that is, he moved it a distance of
at least three metres), mounted it and tore down the fruit. A bare
quarter of an hour had elapsed since the beginning of the test. [8]

 

All's well that ends well. But it does not. A few minutes later the
experiment was repeated -- after the banana had been moved about three
yards from its former position, while the box was left standing where
Koko had dragged it. When Koko was led back onto the stage:

 

he sprang at the new banana in the same manner as before, but with
somewhat less eagerness; at first he ignored the box. After a time
he suddenly approached it, seized and dragged it the greater part of
the distance towards the new banana, but at a distance of a quarter
of a metre he stopped, gazed at the banana, and stood as if quite
puzzled and confused. And now began a tale of woe for both Koko and
the box. When he again set himself in motion it was with every sign of
rage, as he knocked the box this way and that, but came no nearer to
the objective. After waiting a little the experiment was broken off. [9]

 

This tale of woe continued for nineteen days during which the experiment
was repeated at varying intervals; and even afterwards, when the new
skill was firmly established at last, its performance still alternated
for a while with random trials.

 

 

Does Koko's behaviour satisfy the descriptive criteria of insight learning?

 

 

(a)
Suddenness
. Yes, it does -- because at the climactic moment
of the first experiment, the solution did appear suddenly and all of
a piece. No, it does not -- because prior to it Koko had made several
half-hearted attempts at the correct solution and yet abandoned them. (b)
'Complete solution with reference to the whole lyout to the field'. The
answer is, No. (c) 'Smooth, unhesitating, direct and definitive' -- on
one occasion, Yes, on the others, No. (d) 'Solution precedes execution
of solution' -- yes and no. (e) 'Solution retained after a single
performance' -- definitely No. (f) Novelty -- yes.

 

 

Köhler's own comments on this experiment are revealing. Although
in
The Mentality of Apes
he stresses that the gulf between
Trial-and-Error and Insight is unbridgeable ('the contrast is absolute'
[10]), his comment on Koko's initial hesitations and fumblings with the
box is: 'there is only one expression that really fits his behaviour at
that juncture: it's beginning to dawn on him!' [11] Let us note that for
about ten days after that first success, Koko kept manipulating the box,
sometimes aimlessly, sometimes angrily, and during this whole period 'no
trace of a solution appeared, except an equivalent of the words: "there's
something about that box".' [12] In another passage Köhler says
(italics Köhler's): 'It may happen that the animal will attempt a
solution which, while it may not result in success, yet has some meaning
in regard to the situation.
Trying around
then consists in attempts
at solution in the
half-understood
situation.' [13]

 

 

 

Preconditions of Insight

 

 

No more need be said to prove that if we apply the descriptive criteria
which I have enumerated, we find a graded series from 'trying around',
through the 'dawning' of the solution, to the limit case of the sudden
solution. But limit cases at the end of a graded series do not require
a separate set of postulates to explain them. The break in actual
behaviour, the discrete and unitary character of the solution in these
cases can be explained in terms which are also applicable to other
forms of learning. Thus with regard to criterion (a) we can say that
the suddenness of the solution is due to the trigger action of chance
in a situation which was ripe for solution -- that is to say, where the
animal's repertory comprises all the requisite single skills, and where
all that is needed is a link to combine them into a complex skill --
e.g. Sultan accidentally pushing one rod into the opening of the other. In
other cases -- Sultan turning round to pick up the remembered stick --
where chance plays no part, memory provides the link; but memory enters
into all forms of learning. Regarding (c) and (d) (smooth, unitary
execution of the act, indicating that it has been thought out before
being acted out), we may say that the animal has formed a hypothesis,
or carried out an implicit try, followed by explicit performances of the
act. Rats, cats, and dogs also show this brief suspension of activity,
this 'attitude of concentrated attention' [14] before they act out a
hypothesis -- which may or may not be the correct one. (e) Retention
after a single performance can be interpreted as 'induction based on
a single case' -- as the chick, from a single experience, draws the
correct empirical inference that all cinnabar caterpillars are to be
avoided. Lastly, (f),