Wolfgang Köhler studied problem-solving in chimpanzees at the Prussian Academy of Sciences' Anthropoid Station on Tenerife between 1913 and 1917, publishing the results as Intelligenzprüfungen an Menschenaffen (The Mentality of Apes) in 1917. He set the apes problems such as bananas hung out of reach or placed outside their cage, with materials like crates and sticks scattered nearby. His most cited subject, a chimpanzee named Sultan, stacked crates into a makeshift ladder and joined two short sticks into one long enough to rake in fruit. Köhler reported that solutions often followed a pause of apparent inactivity and then arrived as a single, complete, purposeful act rather than the gradual trial-and-error shaping Edward Thorndike had described in cats, and he named this pattern insight learning. The Tenerife studies became a founding demonstration that at least some animal problem-solving involves grasping the relations between elements of a situation, not only reinforced trial and error.
Facts
Key FindingSourced to the subject's own accountChimpanzees such as Sultan solved reach problems, stacking boxes or joining sticks, in sudden, complete solutions after a pause rather than through gradual trial-and-error, a pattern Köhler termed insight. 1 Study YearSourced to the subject's own account Cross-Tradition Connections
Critiqued Here
Köhler read the chimpanzees' sudden, complete solutions as insight learning, a direct challenge to the gradual trial-and-error account Thorndike drew from his puzzle-box cats.
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Sources
1. Wikipedia: Wolfgang Köhler
WikipediaWolfgang Köhler, Tenerife and insight learning sectionQuote, Wolfgang Köhler, Tenerife and insight learning section
Köhler concluded that the chimps had not arrived at these methods through trial-and-error (which American psychologist Edward Thorndike had claimed to be the basis of all animal learning, through his law of effect), but rather that they had an insight, in which, having realized the answer, they proceeded to carry it out in a way that was, in Köhler's words, 'unwaveringly purposeful.'
1. Wikipedia: Wolfgang Köhler
WikipediaWolfgang Köhler, publications sectionQuote, Wolfgang Köhler, publications section
The Mentality of Apes (1917)
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