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
Examination of the detailed results of the white-black discrimination
tests as they appear in the tables of Chapter VII will reveal the fact
that some individuals succeeded in choosing correctly in a series of ten
tests after not more than five series, whereas others required at least
twice as many tests as the basis of a perfect series. In very few
instances, however, was a perfect habit of discrimination established by
fewer than one hundred tests. As the averages just presented in Table 41
indicate, fifteen series, or one hundred and fifty tests, were required
for the completion of the experiment. One might search a long time,
possibly, for another mammal whose curve of error in a simple
discrimination test would fall as gradually as that of the dancer. It is
fair to say that this animal learns very slowly as compared with most
mammals which have been carefully studied. It is to be remembered,
however, that quantitative results such as are here presented for the
dancer are available for few if any other animals except the white rat.
Neither in the form of the curve of learning nor in the behavior of the
animal as it makes its choice of an electric-box is there evidence of
anything which might be described as a sudden understanding of the
situation. The dancer apparently learns by rote. It exhibits neither
intelligent insight into an experimental situation nor ability to profit
by the experience of its companions. That the selection of the white box
occurs in various ways in different individuals, and even in the same
individual at different periods in the training process, is the only
indication of anything suggestive of implicit reasoning. Naturally enough
comparison of the two boxes is the first method of selection. It takes the
dancers a surprisingly long time to reach the point of making this
comparison as soon as they are confronted by the entrances to the two
electric-boxes. The habit of running from entrance to entrance repeatedly
before either is entered, once having been acquired, is retained often
throughout the training experiments. But in other cases, an individual
finally comes to the point of choosing by what appears to be the immediate
recognition of the right or the wrong box. In the former case the mouse
enters the white box immediately; in the latter, it rushes from the black
box into the white one without hesitation. So much evidence the
discrimination tests furnish of forms of behavior which in our fellow-men
we should interpret as rational.
[Illustration: FIGURE 31.--Curve of habit formation, plotted from the data
of labyrinth-D tests with ten males and ten females.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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