Chapter 38

is a weak pre-existing linkage directly across from S to M, and this gets used to a slight degree, strictly according to the conditioned reflex diagram, with I playing the part of the effective stimulus in arousing M, and S the part of the originally ineffective stimulus. By dint of being exercised in this way, the linkage S--M becomes strong enough to arouse the motor response directly, and I is then very likely to be left out altogether.]

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2. Response by analogy and association by similarity.

When an object reminds me of a similar object, that is association by similarity. But suppose I actually take the object to be the similar object, and behave towards it accordingly; then my reaction is called "response by analogy". Once, when far from home, I saw a man whom I took to be an acquaintance from my home town, and stepped up to him, extending my hand. He did not appear very enthusiastic, and informed me that, in his opinion, I had made a mistake. This was response by analogy, but if I had simply said to myself that that man looked like my acquaintance, that would have been association by similarity. Really, association by similarity is the more complex response, for it involves response to the points of newness in the present object, as well as to the points of resemblance to the familiar object, whereas response by analogy consists simply in responding to the points of resemblance.

Response by analogy often appears in little children, as when they call all men "papa"' or as when they call the squirrel a "kitty" when first seen. If they call it a "funny kitty", that is practically association by similarity, since the word "funny" is a response to the points in which a squirrel is different from a cat, while the word "kitty" is a response to the points of resemblance.

But response by analogy is not always so childish or comic as the above examples might seem to imply. When we respond to a picture by recognizing the objects depicted, that is response by analogy, since the pictured object is only {407} partially like the real object; a bare outline drawing may be enough to arouse the response of "seeing" the object. Other instances of response by analogy will come to light when, in the next chapter, we come to the study of perception.

The machinery of response by analogy is easily understood by aid of the law of combination. A complex object, presenting a number of parts and characteristics, arouses the response of seeing and perhaps naming the object. This is a unitary response to a collection of stimuli, and each of the parts or characteristics of the object participates in arousing the response, and the linkage of each part with the response is thus strengthened. Later, therefore, the whole identical object is not required to arouse this same {408} response, but some of its parts or characteristics will give the response, and they may do this even when they are present in an object that has other and unfamiliar parts and characteristics.

The machinery of association by similarity is the same, with the addition of a second response, called out by the new characteristics of the present object.

II. SUBSTITUTE RESPONSE EXPLAINED BY THE LAW OF COMBINATION

The substitute response machinery is more complicated than that of the substitute stimulus, as it includes the latter and something more. What that something more is will be clear if we ask ourselves why a substitute response should ever be made. Evidently because there is something wrong with the original response; if that were entirely satisfactory, it would continue to be made, and there would be no room for a substitute. The original response being unsatisfactory to the individual, how is he to find a substitute? Only by finding some stimulus that will arouse it. This is where trial and error come in, consisting in a search for some extra stimulus that shall give a satisfactory response.

Suppose now that the extra stimulus has been found which arouses a satisfactory substitute response. The original stimulus, or the reaction-tendency aroused by it, still continuing, participates in arousing the substitute response, playing the part of the originally ineffective stimulus in the conditioned reflex. Thus the original stimulus becomes strongly linked with the substitute response.

The process of reaching a substitute response thus includes three stages: (a) original response found unsatisfactory, (b) new stimulus found which gives a satisfactory substitute response, (c) attachment of the substitute response to the original stimulus.

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There are two main cases under the general head of substitute response. In one case, the substitute response is essentially an old response, not acquired during the process of substitution, but simply substituted, as indicated just above, for the original response to the situation. This represents the common trial and error learning of animals. The second case is that where the substitute response has to be built up by combination of old responses into a higher unit.

C. Substitute Response, but not in Itself a New Response

I. Trial and error.

Our much-discussed instance of the _cat in the cage_ need not be described again, but may simply be illustrated by a diagram.

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2. Learning to balance on a bicycle.

When the beginner feels the bicycle tipping to the left, he naturally responds by leaning to the right, and even by turning the wheel to the right. Result unsatisfactory--strained position and further tipping to the left. As the bicyclist is about to fall, he saves himself by a response which he has previously learned in balancing on his feet; he extends his foot to the left, which amounts to a response to the ground on the left as a good base of support. Now let him sometime respond to the ground on his left by turning his wheel that way, and, to his surprise and gratification, he finds the tipping overcome, and his balance well maintained. The response of turning to the left, originally made to the ground on the left (but in part to the tipping), becomes so linked with the tipping as to be the prompt reaction whenever tipping is felt. The diagram of this process would be the same as for the preceding instance.

D. Substitute Response, the Response Being a Higher Motor Unit

1. The brake and clutch combination in driving an automobile.

This may serve as an instance of _simultaneous coördination_, since the two movements which are combined into a higher unit are executed simultaneously. The beginner in driving an automobile often has considerable trouble in learning to release the "clutch", which, operated by the left foot, ungears the car from the engine, and so permits the car to be stopped without stopping the engine. The foot brake, operated by the right foot, is comparatively easy to master, because the necessity for stopping the car is a perfectly clear and definite stimulus. Now, when the beginner gets a brake-stimulus, he responds promptly with his right foot, but neglects to employ his left foot on the clutch, because he has no effective clutch-stimulus; there is nothing {411} in the situation that reminds him of the clutch. Result, engine stalled, ridicule for the driver. Next time, perhaps, he _thinks_ "clutch" when he gets the brake-stimulus, and this thought, being itself a clutch-stimulus, arouses the clutch-response simultaneously with the brake-response. After doing this a number of times, the driver no longer needs the thought of the clutch as a stimulus, for the left foot movement on the clutch has become effectively linked with the brake-stimulus, so that any occasion that arouses the brake-response simultaneously arouses the clutch response.

The combination of two responses is effected by linking both to the same stimulus; thus the two become united into a coördinated higher motor unit.

2. The word-habit in typewriting furnishes an example of _successive coördination_, the uniting of a sequence of movements into a higher unit. [Footnote: See p. 324.] The beginner has to spell out {412} the word he is writing, and make a separate response to each letter; but when he has well mastered the letter-habits, and, still unsatisfied, is trying for more speed, it happens that he thinks ahead while writing the first letter of a word, and _prepares_ for the second letter. In effect, he commences reacting to the second letter while still writing the first. This goes further, till he anticipates the series of letters forming a short word while still at the beginning of the word. The letter movements are thus linked to the thought of the word as a whole, and the word becomes an effective stimulus for arousing the series of letter movements.

Many other instances of learning can be worked out in the same way, and there seems to be no difficulty in {413} interpreting any of them by the law of combination. Even "negative adaptation" can possibly be interpreted as an instance of substitute response; some slight and easy response may be substituted for the avoiding reaction or the attentive reaction that an unimportant stimulus at first arouses, these reactions being rather a nuisance when they are unnecessary. On the whole, the law of combination seems to fill the bill very well. It explains what the law of exercise left unexplained. It always brings in the law of exercise as an ally, and, in explaining substitute response, it brings in the law of effect, which however, as we saw before, may be a sub-law under the law of exercise. These two, or three laws, taken together, give an adequate analysis of the whole process of learning.

The Law of Combination in Recall

Unitary response to multiple stimuli is important in recall as well as in learning. The clearest case of this is afforded by "controlled association". [Footnote: See p. 381.]

In an opposites test, the response to the stimulus word "long" is aroused partly by this stimulus word, and partly by the "mental set" for opposites. There are two lines of influence, converging upon the response, "long--short" (of which only the word "short" may be spoken): one line from the stimulus word "long", and the other from the mental set for pairs of opposite words. The mental set for opposites tends to arouse any pair of opposites; the word "long" tends to arouse any previously observed group of words of which "long" is a part. The mental set, an internal stimulus, and the stimulus word coming from outside, converge or combine to arouse one particular response.

The mental set for adding has previously exercised {414} linkages with the responses composing the addition table, while the mental set for multiplication has linkages with the responses composing the multiplication table. When the set for adding is active, a pair of numbers, seen or heard, together with this internal stimulus of the mental set, arouses the response that gives the sum; but when the multiplying set is active, the same pair of numbers gives the product as the response. All thinking towards any goal is a similar instance of the law of combination.

The Laws of Learning in Terms of the Neurone

We have good evidence that the brain is concerned in learning and retention. Loss of some of the cortex through injury often brings loss of learned reactions, and the kind of reactions lost differs with the part of the cortex affected. Injury in the occipital lobe brings loss of visual knowledge, and injury in the neighborhood of the auditory sense-center brings loss of auditory knowledge.

Injury to the retina or optic nerve, occurring early in life, results in an under-development of the cortex in the occipital lobe. The nerve cells remain small and their dendrites few and meager, because they have not received their normal amount of exercise through stimulation from the eye.

Exercise, then, has the same general effect on neurones that it has on muscles; it causes them to grow and it probably also improves their internal condition so that they act more readily and more strongly. The growth, in the cortex, of dendrites and of the end-brushes of axons that interlace with the dendrites, must improve the synapses between one neurone and another, and thus make better conduction paths between one part of the cortex and another, and also between the cortex and the lower sensory and motor centers.

The law of exercise has thus a very definite meaning when {415} translated into neural terms. It means that the synapses between stimulus and response are so improved, when traversed by nerve currents in the making of a reaction, that nerve currents can get across them more easily the next time.

The more a synapse is used, the better synapse it becomes, and the better linkage it provides between some stimulus and some response. The cortex is the place where linkages are made in the process of learning, and it is there also that forgetting, or atrophy, takes place through disuse. Exercise makes a synapse closer, disuse lets it relapse into a loose and poorly conducting state.

The law of combination, also, is readily translated into {416} neural terms. The "pre-existing loose linkages" which it assumed to exist undoubtedly do exist in the form of "association fibers" extending in vast numbers from any one part of the cortex to many other parts. These fibers are provided by native constitution, but probably terminate rather loosely in the cortex until exercise has developed them. They may be compared to telephone wires laid down in the cables through the streets and extending into the houses, but still requiring a little fine work to attach them properly to the telephone instruments.

The diagrams illustrating different cases under the law of combination can easily be perfected into neural diagrams, though, to be sure, any diagram is ultra-simple as compared with the great number of neurones that take part in even a simple reaction.

The reader will be curious to know now much of this neural interpretation of our psychological laws is observed fact, and how much speculation. Well, we cannot as yet {417} observe the brain mechanism in actual operation--not in any detail. We have good evidence, as already outlined, for growth of the neurones and their branches through exercise.

We have perfectly good evidence of the law of "unitary response to multiple stimuli" from the physiological study of reflex action; and we have perfectly good anatomical evidence of the convergence and divergence of neural paths of connection, as required by the law of combination. The association fibers extending from one part to another of the cortex are an anatomical fact. [Footnote: See p. 56.] Facilitation is a fact, and that means that a stimulus which could not of itself arouse a response can coöperate with another stimulus that has a direct connection with that response, and reinforce its effect. In short, all the elements required for a neural law of combination are known facts, and the only matter of doubt is whether we have built these elements together aright in our interpretation. It is not pure speculation, by any means.

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EXERCISES

1. Outline the chapter, in the form of a list of laws and sub-laws.

2. Review the instances of learning cited in Chapters XIII-XV, and examine whether they are covered and sufficiently accounted for by the general laws given in the present chapter.

3. Draw diagrams, like those given in this chapter, for the simpler cases, at least, that you have considered in question 2.

4. Show that response by analogy is important in the development of language. Consider metaphor, for example, and slang, and the using of an old word in a new sense (as in the case of 'rail-road').

REFERENCES

William James devoted much thought to the problem of the mechanism of learning, habit, association, etc., and his conclusions are set forth in several passages in his _Principles of Psychology_, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 104-112, 554-594, and Vol. II, pp. 578-592.

Another serious consideration of the matter is given by William McDougall in his _Physiological Psychology_, 1905, Chapters VII and VIII.

See also Thorndike's _Educational Psychology, Briefer Course_, 1914,