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
Labyrinth C is a type of maze which might properly be described as
irregular, since the several possible errors are extremely different in
nature. In view of the results which this labyrinth yielded, it seemed
important that the dancer be tested in a perfectly regular maze of the
labyrinth-D type. The plan which I designed as a regular labyrinth has
been reproduced, from a rubber stamp print, in Figure 28. As is true also
of the mazes previously described, it provides four kinds of possible
mistakes: namely, by turning to the left (errors 1, 5, 9, and 13), by
turning to the right (errors 3, 7, and 11), by moving straight ahead
(errors 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12), and by turning back and retracing the
path just followed. The formula for the correct path of _D_ is simple in
the extreme, in spite of the large number of mistakes which are possible,
for it is merely "a turn to the right at the entrance, to the left at the
first doorway, and thereafter alternately to the right and to the left
until the exit is reached." This concise description would enable a man to
find his way out of such a maze with ease. Labyrinth D had been
constructed with an exit at 10 so that it might be used as a nine-error
maze if the experimenter saw fit, or as a thirteen-error maze by the
closing of the opening at 10. In the experiments which are now to be
described only the latter form was used.
Can the dancer learn a regular labyrinth path more quickly than an
irregular one? Again, I may give only a brief statement of results. Each
of the twenty dancers, of Table 40, which were trained in labyrinth D had
previously been given opportunity to learn the path of C, and most of them
had been trained also in labyrinth B. All of them learned this regular
path with surprising rapidity. The numerical results of the tests with
labyrinths B, C, and D, as well as the behavior of the mice in these
several mazes, prove conclusively that the nature of the errors is far
more important than their number. Labyrinth D with its thirteen chances of
error on the forward trip was not nearly as difficult for the dancer to
learn to escape from as labyrinth C with its five errors. That the
facility with which the twenty individuals whose records are given in
Table 40 learned the path of D was not due to their previous labyrinth
experience rather than to the regularity of the maze is proved by the
results which I obtained by testing in D individuals which were new to
labyrinth experiments. Even in this case, the number of tests necessary
for a successful trip was seldom greater than ten. If further evidence of
the ease with which a regular labyrinth path may be followed by the dancer
were desired, it might be obtained by observation of the behavior of an
individual in labyrinths C and D. In the former, even after it has learned
the path perfectly, the mouse hesitates at the doorways from time to time
as if uncertain whether to turn to one side or go forward; in the latter
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