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 quantitative study of the duration of simple habits of choice showed
that in the majority of cases a perfectly acquired habit persists for at
least two weeks. To be perfectly fair to the animal I must restrict this
statement to visual conditions other than colors, for the dancer exhibited
little ability either to acquire or to retain a habit of distinguishing
spectral colors. Altogether, I made a large number of white-black and
black-white memory tests after rest intervals of four, six, eight, or ten
weeks. The results for the four-week interval show extreme individual
differences in memory. Number 1000, for example, was able to choose
correctly every time in a series of white-black tests after a rest
interval of four weeks, whereas No. 5 was wrong as often as she was right
after the same interval. I have placed the results for these two
individuals at the head of the table because they suggest the variations
which render averages undesirable. Number 1000 had a perfect habit at the
end of four weeks of disuse; No. 5 had no habit whatever. I shall reserve
further discussion of age, sex, and individual differences in the
permanency of habits for the next chapter.
With Nos. 7 and 998 memory tests were made after three different rest
intervals. At the end of two weeks the black-white habit was present in
both individuals, although it was not perfect. After six and four weeks,
respectively (see Table 48), it still persisted; in fact, it apparently
had improved as the result of additional training after the earlier memory
tests. At the expiration of ten weeks it had wholly disappeared. In her
first series of memory tests after the ten-week interval No. 7 made only
one error, but a chance choice of the black (right) in the first test and
the subsequent choice of the box in which no shock had been received serve
to account for results which at first appear to be indicative of memory.
That this explanation is correct is proved by the fact that a second
memory series, in which the first choice happened to be wrong, resulted in
six mistakes. Evidently she had lost the habit.
In no instance have memory tests definitely indicated the presence of a
habit after a rest interval of more than eight weeks. It is safe,
therefore, to conclude from the results which have been obtained that a
white-black or black-white discrimination habit may persist during an
interval of from two to eight weeks of disuse, but that such a habit is
seldom perfect after more than four weeks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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