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
Only three of the ten individuals failed to re-acquire the habit of white-
black discrimination more quickly than it had originally been acquired,
and, in the case of these exceptions, No. 220 required exactly the same
number of tests in each case, and No. 420 was placed at a slight
disadvantage in the re-learning series by an interruption of the training
between the seventh and the eighth series. Had his training been completed
by the sixth series he too would have had the same number of tests in
training and re-training. Moreover, and this is of preëminent importance
for a fair interpretation of the results, in several instances even those
individuals which exhibited as strong a preference for the black in the
memory series as in the preliminary series re-learned more quickly than
they had learned. Number 210, for example, although he gave no evidence of
memory, and, in fact, chose the black more frequently in the memory series
than he did in the preliminary series, re-acquired the discrimination
habit in less than half the number of tests which had been necessary for
the establishment of the habit originally.
TABLE 50
WHITE-BLACK TRAINING. TEN TESTS PER DAY
Females
TRAINING RE-TRAINING
215 225 235 415 425 Av. 215 225 235 415 425 Av.
A 8 4 4 8 5 5.8 5 2 7 6 3 4.6
B 8 7 6 6 2 5.8 8 5 6 4 3 5.2
1 7 6 5 6 4 5.6 4 1 5 4 3 3.4
2 5 6 4 2 5 4.4 1 1 1 2 3 1.6
3 3 3 4 3 4 3.4 1 0 3 6 0 2.0
4 2 1 3 3 3 2.4 0 0 3 3 1 1.4
5 1 3 3 3 3 2.6 0 0 died 2 0 0.5
6 2 1 1 1 0 1.0 0 1 0 0.2
7 1 1 2 3 3 2.0 0 0 0
8 0 0 2 2 3 1.4 1 0.2
9 1 0 0 1 1 0.6 0 0
10 0 2 1 0 2 1.0 0 0
11 0 3 0 1 0 0.8 0 0
12 0 0 0 2 0 0.4
13 0 0 0 0 0
14 0 0 0
15 0 0
The facts which have been presented thus far become more significant when
the indices of modifiability for the learning and the re-learning
processes are compared.
INDICES OF MODIFIABILITY
LEARNING RE-LEARNING
Females . . . . . . . 104 42.5
Males . . . . . . . . 72 54
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account