ABSTRACT
In all intelligence tests which apply to an optically given situation, the subject of the experiment has—if one watches in detail—among other tasks, to grasp certain forms and shapes (“Gestalten” : v. Ehrenfels, Wertheimer) 1 . These factors of form in most of the experiments described have been of the simplest, so that the uninitiated hardly recognize the characteristic properties of “ shapes ” {Gestalten) in them : sheer distances (very often), the relation of sizes to each other (in the experiment with the double stick, the relation of the two openings), crude directions and at the most the components of direction (model experiment of the preceding chapter, experiment with door, etc.). But always where a problem of form made greater demands on the animals—i.e. where, untheoretically, one would for the first time speak of forms and shapes (in the narrower sense) —the chimpanzee began to fail, and, regardless of fine details in the structure of the situation, to proceed as if all forms were “en bloc” without any more precise structure. This occurred in the experiment with the wound gymnastic rope, with the coiled wire, and in building with boxes. Now, situations in which one tested mammals, from cats upwards, for intelligence, usually contained very complicated forms, especially all sorts of door-bolts and such-like. That animals below anthropoids do not immediately (if ever) understand these arrangements is obvious after what has been said. I cannot make use of such accidentally complicated experimental material when going over to more difficult experiments with the chimpanzee; and the following tests are directed as much as possible to finding out the primary functions of ever-rising degrees of difficulty, which generally remain hidden to the experimenter who makes experiments on “unlocking”, “double-bolts”, and so forth. The points to consider when planning a test are psychological, and not technical, ones; when an animal cannot undo, or can somehow undo, a complicated fastening, the psychologist still remains entirely in the dark as to what, psychologically speaking, it was not able, or was able, to accomplish.
