ABSTRACT
The preceding experiments have indicated that so simple an organism as the rat can learn to imitate in one situation and will generalize this learning to other situations. Since the animals started out with no marked initial tendency either to imitate or not to imitate, the process of this learning could be followed clearly through a complete learning curve beginning with the chance behaviour of an apparently naïve organism and ending with the finally perfected habit of imitative behaviour. Animals were employed as subjects because of the greater probability that they would be initially naïve and the greater ease of controlling their basic drives.
