with accidental success". Though cats did perform worse on occasion, Thorndike generally found that as cats continued the trials, the time taken to escape the boxes decreased in most cases.

Thorndike considered the cat to follow the law of effect, which states that responses followed by satisfaction (i.e. a reward) become more likely responses to the same stimulus in the future. Thorndike was generally skeptical of the presence of intelligence in cats, criticising sources of the contemporary writing