The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes

Robert Mearns Yerkes wrote The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes: A Study of Ideational Behavior. The work appears as Volume 3, Number 1, 1916, of Behavior Monographs, Serial Number 12, edited by John B. Watson. The contents list includes results of multiple-choice experiments for Skirrl, Sobke and Julius. The contents list names, among others, a box stacking experiment, a box and pole experiment, a draw-in experiment and a lock and key test.

The writer says the light obtained on the general problem of ideation has come, first, through a method rather inaptly named the multiple-choice method. The writer says the multiple-choice method was devised three years ago as a means of obtaining strictly comparable objective data concerning the problem-solving ability of various types and conditions of animals. One statement in the book says that systematic research with the primates should rapidly justify itself, for upon its results must rest the most significant historical or genetic biological descriptions.