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
Further analysis of the results proves that this statement is not true.
When the averages for the two sexes are compared, it appears that the
males learned much less quickly at four months than at one month, whereas
just the reverse is true of the females. The dash and dot line of the
figure extends from the index of modifiability of the one-month males (72)
to that of the four-month males (120); and the regularly interrupted line
similarly joins the indices of the one-month (104) and the four-month (85)
females. In seeking to discover age differences in docility or ability to
profit by experience we have stumbled upon what appears to be an important
sex difference. Perhaps I should add to this presentation of partial
results the following statement. Since there are only four individuals in
the four-month group, two of each sex, the indices are not very reliable,
and consequently too much stress should not be laid upon the age and sex
differences which are indicated.
In view of this impressive instance of the way in which averages may
conceal facts and lead the observer to false inferences, I wish to remark
that my study of the dancer has convinced me of the profound truth of the
statement that the biologist, whether he be psychologist, anthropologist,
physiologist, or morphologist, should work with the organic individual and
should first of all deal with his results as individual results. Averages
have their place and value, but to mass data before their individual
significance has been carefully sought out is to conceal or distort their
meaning. Too many of us, in our eagerness for quantitative results and in
our desire to obtain averages which shall justify general statements, get
the cart before the horse.
Figure 33 presents the beginning of what I propose to call plasticity
curves. When these three curves are completed on the basis of experiments
with five dancers of each sex for each of the ages indicated on the base
line of the figure, they will indicate what general changes in plasticity,
modifiability of behavior, or ability to learn (for all of these
expressions have been used to designate much the same capacity of the
organism) occur from the first month to the nineteenth in the male and the
female dancer, and in the race without respect to sex. So far as I know,
data for the construction of plasticity curves such as I hope in the near
future to be able to present for the dancing mouse have not been obtained
for any mammal.
At present it would be hazardous for me to attempt to state any general
conclusion concerning the relation of docility to age.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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