Edward Thorndike watched cats learn to escape from puzzle boxes. Because they improved gradually over many trials, he concluded that

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Thorndike's observations led him to propose the law of effect, which states that behaviors followed by satisfying consequences become more likely to occur again, whereas behaviors followed by unpleasant consequences become less likely to occur again. He believed that the cats in the puzzle box experiments were learning through trial-and-error and association between their actions and the resulting consequences, without any higher mental processes such as insight or understanding.

Edward Thorndike Watched Cats Learn to Escape from Puzzle Boxes