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
The apparatus which was used is described in detail in Chapter VII.
Figures 14 and 15 will greatly aid the reader in understanding its
essential features. Two small wooden boxes, identical in form and as
closely similar as possible in general appearance, were placed in a larger
box in such positions that a mouse was forced to enter and pass through
one of them in order to get to the nest-box. On the bottom of each of
these small boxes was a series of wires through which an electric current
could be made to pass at the will of the experimenter. The boxes could
readily be interchanged in position. At one side of the large wooden box
and beyond the range of vision of the mouse was an electric bell which
could be caused to ring whenever the mouse approached the entrance to one
of the small boxes. The point of the experiment was to determine whether
the dancer could learn to avoid the box-which-rang when it was approached.
The method of conducting the tests was as follows. Each day at a certain
hour the mouse was placed in that part of the large box whence it could
escape to the nest-box only by passing through one of the small boxes. If
it approached the wrong box (whether it happened to be the one on the
right or the one on the left depended upon the experimenter's decision),
the bell began to ring as a warning against entering; if it approached the
other box, all was silent. As motives for the choice of the box-which-did-
not-ring both reward and punishment were employed. The reward consisted of
freedom to return to the nest-box _via_ the passage which led from the
box-which-did-not-ring; the punishment, which consisted of a disagreeable
electric shock, was given whenever the mouse entered the wrong box, that
is, the one which had the sound as a warning. Entering the wrong box
resulted in a disagreeable stimulus and in the necessity of returning to
the large box, for the exit to the nest-box by way of the passage from
this box was closed. My assumption, on the basis of extended study of the
ability of the dancer to profit by experience, was that if it could hear
the sound of the bell it would soon learn to avoid the box-that-rang and
enter instead the one which had no sound associated with it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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