the kerplunk experiment
12:38 pm on the 29th of March, 2005John Broadhus Watson became adept at taming rats and found he could train rats to open a puzzle-box for a small food-reward. He also studied maze-learning but simplified the task dramatically.
One type of maze is simply a long straight alley with food at the end. Watson found that once the animal was well trained at running this ‘maze’ it did so almost automatically. Once started by the stimulus of the maze its behavior becomes a series of associations between movements (or their kinaesthetic consequences) rather than stimuli in the outside world. This is made plain by shortening the alleyway - the well-trained rats now run straight into the end wall. This was known as the kerplunk experiment.
I think we are all a bit like a lab-rat. Gordon is talking about Information Design today and made this example:
if you were brought up in an environment where all the cold taps were on the left hand side of every sink, your own experience would subconciously baulk when confronted with a cold tap positioned on the right.
There are also some interesting comments. Watch someone who has only ever used Windows sit down and try to use an Apple, they’ll run straight into the wall like the trained rat. The only difference is that after the rat hits its wall it won’t throw the cheese about in a rage but the human will throw the Apple about.
