Intelligence is one of the great concepts studied by psychology and, moreover, one of the most difficult to explain. Since the intellect is a defining capacity of the human being, it is difficult to trace its evolutionary roots and, therefore, to understand how its biological bases originated in our species. However, it is not true that the intellectual capacity we have has come out of nowhere, and this is also evident in the study of other species with which we have common ancestors: the so-called research on animal intelligence.

The ability to create simple mental scenes in which problems can be solved virtually, also called insightfulness, is also characteristic of some recently evolved animals. The foundations of intelligent behaviour can therefore be found in other species contemporary to our own. Regarding the study of animal intelligence, two of the reference psychologists are Wolfgang Köhler , associated with the psychology of Gestalt , and Edward Thorndike , a behavioural psychologist.

Animal intelligence, polyhedral concept

Firstly, we must clarify the subject matter of both Kölher and Thorndike. The first of them wants to check to what extent there are intelligent behaviours in animals, especially in anthropoids, but he specifies that their level of intelligence is behind that of the human being in terms of insight. The second of these, Thorndike, highlights its object of study as a process described in terms of laws of association. Therefore, while Köhler looks at the qualitative leaps that occur in animal behavior when solving a problem (explained by the fact that arrives “out of the blue” at the resolution of a problem thanks to the power of insight ), Thorndike explains problem solving in animals as a cumulative process of repetitions.

With reference to Thorndike, we highlight his special interest in the knowledge of the sensory faculties, phenotypes, reactions and representational links established by experience when studying animal intelligence. According to his criteria, the word “association” can encompass a multitude of different processes that are manifested in multiple contexts. In this way, for Thorndike, association not only does not mark the limits of rational behaviour, but it is the substratum of this behaviour as it is the mechanism by which certain animals adapt to their environment in the best possible way . For this reason, it rejects the negative connotations of a word linked to the environment of the laboratory .

Kölher, however, considers that there is no associationist psychologist who, in his impartial observations, does not distinguish and contrast unintelligent behaviour on the one hand and unintelligent behaviour on the other. That is why when Thorndike, after his research with cats and chickens, mentions that “nothing in their behavior seems intelligent” Kölher considers that whoever formulates the results in these terms should be more flexible in his definition of animal intelligence .

The method

For Thorndike’s object of study, that is, to interpret the ways animals act, he constructed a method of study based on the mediation of time progress curves. These curves of progress in the formation of the “correct” associations, calculated from the records of the animal’s times in the successive trials, are absolute facts. He considers them to be good representations of the progress in the formation of the association because they account for two essential factors: the disappearance of all activity except that which leads to success and the carrying out of the latter activity in a precise and voluntary manner .

The place

The medium for this type of analysis was the laboratory , since it allowed the isolation of variables as much as possible. As for the animals under study, he used mainly cats, but also chickens and dogs, to determine the ability and time it took these animals to build a set of actions that were sufficiently effective to achieve their goals, that is, to reach the food or what the researcher showed them through the bars of the box.

Kölher, despite the occasional use of chickens and dogs as experimental subjects to study animal intelligence, focuses his attention on anthropoids. For these, he constructs a complicated geometry of movements so that the animals reach their objective, which is situated in such a way that it is visually identified by the anthropoids. In addition, he considers it extremely important that the behaviour of these animals should be continuously observed, for which he carries out a good analysis based on observation . Kölher considers that only by provoking insecurity and perplexity in chimpanzees through slight modifications of the problem can the constant adaptation to the circumstances that is manifested through intelligent action be studied.

Discussion on animal intelligence

Thorndike concluded that the starting point for the association is the set of instinctive activities activated at the moment when the animal feels uncomfortable in the cage, either because of confinement or because of a desire for food. Thus one of the movements present in the varied behavioural repertoire of the animal would be selected for success . Then the animal associates certain impulses that have led it to success with the feeling of confinement, and these “useful” impulses are strengthened by the association .

Kölher, in addition to his idea of the importance of geometric conditions, took into account that chance can lead animals to privileged and unequal positions since sometimes it can happen that a series of coincidences lead the animal directly to the goal, masking the whole process as a sign of animal intelligence. This leads to the conclusion that the more complex the work to be done, the lower the probability of a solution by chance. He also believes that the experiment becomes more difficult when a part of the problem, if possible the most important part, is not visible from the starting point, but only known from experience. That is why he considers important the complexity of the problem and consequently the discrimination between behaviors determined by chance and intelligent behaviors.

The critics

Kölher had some objections to Thorndike’s experiments. The main one was his criticism of Thorndike’s idea that in animals no idea emanates from the perception from which to work mentally on the resolution of a problem (as it does in human beings), but that they simply establish connections between experiences. Köler, however, speaks of the capacity of insight of many animals, the property of being able to suddenly arrive at the solution of a problem through the mental representation of what is happening in the environment.

In turn, Thorndike denied that in the animal there is an awareness of available ideas or impulses, and therefore also denied the possibility that the animal association is identical to the association of human psychology. From this position, denied the existence of animal intelligence .

Kölher, however, asserts that intelligent behaviors do exist, at least in the anthropoids, even though they are inferior to that of human beings. This lower degree in the insight of non-human animals is explained fundamentally by the lack of the capacity to create language and the limitation in the repertoire of possible ideas, which remain linked to the concrete and the immediate environment.