The Dancing Mouse: A Study in Animal BehaviorYerkes, Robert Mearns
Science
The Dancing Mouse: A Study in Animal Behavior
Yerkes, Robert Mearns
Animal behavior; Dancing mice
This test of brightness preference was followed by two series, 16 and 17,
under conditions similar to those of the first four series of the table.
For series 16 the value of the light in the left box was 1 candle meter,
that of the light in the right box 1800 candle meters. Discrimination was
perfect. For series 17 the value for the left remained at 1 candle meter,
but that of the right box was decreased to 0. In this series No. 152 was
entirely at a loss to know which box to choose. Of course this was an
entirely new set of conditions for choice, namely, a colored box, the
green or the red as the case might be, beside a dark box, the one which
was not illuminated. If the mice really had been choosing correctly
because of a habit of avoiding the red or of seeking the green, this
method should bring out the fact, for the red box, since with it the
disagreeable electric shock had always been associated, should be a box to
be avoided. For No. 151 this seemed to be the case.
Series 23 to 27 of Table 24 were given as final and crucial tests of the
relation of brightness discrimination to color discrimination. As it is
not possible to express in a simple formula the conditions of the tests, a
sample series which indicates the brightness of the colors in each of the
twenty tests of a series, and in addition the results given by No. 151 in
the first of these final series, is reproduced in Table 25. For an animal
which had presumably learned perfectly to choose green in preference to
red, the record of 8 mistakes in 20 choices as a result of changes in
relative brightness is rather bad, and it renders doubtful the existence
of color discrimination in any of these experiments. No. 152 showed no
ability whatever to choose the green in the first of the series (series 23
of Table 24) of which that of Table 25 is a sample. His record, 10
mistakes in 20 choices, was even poorer than that of No. 151. That both of
these mice learned to choose fairly accurately in these final tests is
shown by the results of series 24, 25, 26, and 27. I must admit, however,
that these records indicate little ability on the part of the animals to
discriminate colors.
TABLE 24
GREEN-RED TESTS
Brightnesses Extremely Different for Human Eye
Intensities are given in candle meters (c.m.)
NO. 151 NO. 152
SERIES DATE CONDITIONS
RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG
(GREEN) (RED) (GREEN) (RED)
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