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
To determine the delicacy of discrimination with reflected light it is
necessary to have a series of neutral grays (colorless) whose adjacent
members differ from one another in brightness by less than the threshold
of discrimination of the animal to be tested. A series which promised to
fulfill these conditions was that of Richard Nendel of Berlin. It consists
of fifty papers, beginning with pure white, numbered 1, and passing by
almost imperceptible steps of decrease in brightness through the grays to
black, which is numbered 50. For the present we may assume that these
papers are so nearly neutral that whatever discrimination occurs is due to
brightness. The differences between successive papers of the series are
perceptible to man. The question is, can they, under favorable conditions
of illumination, be perceived by the dancer?
On the basis of the fact that the dancer can discriminate between white
and black, two grays which differed from one another in brightness by a
considerable amount were chosen from the Nendel series; these were numbers
10 and 20. It seemed certain, from the results of previous experiments,
that the discrimination of these papers by brightness difference would be
possible, and that therefore the use of papers between these two extremes
would suffice to demonstrate the delicacy of discrimination. In Figure 16
we have a fairly accurate representation of the relative brightness of the
Nendel papers Nos. 10, 15, and 20.
[Illustration: FIGURE 16. Three of Nendel's gray papers: Nos. 10, 15, and
20. To exhibit differences in brightness.]
Pieces of the gray papers were pasted upon cardboard carriers so that they
might be placed in the discrimination box as were the white and black
cardboards in the tests of brightness vision previously described. Mice
which had been trained to choose the white box by series of white-black
tests were now tested with light gray (No. 10) and dark gray (No. 20), my
assumption being that they would immediately choose the brighter of the
two if they were able to detect the difference. As a matter of fact this
did not always occur; some individuals had to be trained to discriminate
gray No. 10 from gray No. 20. As soon as an individual had been so trained
that the ability to choose the lighter of these grays was perfect, it was
tested with No. 10 in combination with No. 15. If these in turn proved to
be discriminable, No. 10 could be used with No. 14, with No. 13, and so on
until either the limit of discrimination or that of the series had been
reached.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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