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
That it was not necessary to use other combinations than 10 with 20, and
10 with 15 is demonstrated by the results of Table 13. Mouse No. 420,
whose behavior was not essentially different from that of three other
individuals which were tested for gray discrimination, learned with
difficulty to choose gray No. 10 even when it was used with No. 20. Two
series of ten tests each were given to this mouse daily, and not until the
twentieth of these series (200 tests) did he succeed in making ten correct
choices in succession. Immediately after this series of correct choices,
tests with grays No. 10 and No. 15 were begun. In the case of this amount
of brightness difference twenty series failed to reveal discrimination.
The average number of right choices in the series is slightly in excess of
the mistakes, 5.8 as compared with 4.2.
From the experiments with gray papers we may conclude that under the
conditions of the tests the amount by which Nendel's gray No. 10 differs
in brightness from No. 20 is near the threshold of discrimination, or, in
other words, that the difference in the brightness of the adjacent grays
of Figure 16 is scarcely sufficient to enable the dancer to distinguish
them.
TABLE 13
GRAY DISCRIMINATION
The Delicacy of Brightness Discrimination
No. 420
GRAYS NOS. 10 GRAYS NOS. 20
AND 20 AND 15
SERIES DATE DATE
NO. 10 NO. 2 NO. 10 NO. 15
(RIGHT) (WRONG) (RIGHT) (WRONG)
1 Jan. 26 5 5 Feb. 6 8 2
2 27 8 2 6 5 5
3 28 6 4 7 9 1
4 28 2 8 7 7 3
5 29 1 9 8 5 5
6 29 6 4 8 6 4
7 30 9 1 9 5 5
8 30 7 3 9 6 4
9 31 6 4 10 8 2
10 31 4 6 10 3 7
11 Feb. 1 7 3 11 4 6
12 1 8 2 11 4 6
13 2 7 3 12 7 3
14 2 8 2 12 7 3
15 3 9 1 13 6 4
16 3 9 1 13 4 6
17 4 6 4 14 4 6
18 4 9 1 14 5 5
19 5 6 4 15 5 5
20 5 10 0 15 8 2
Averages 6.6 3.4 5.8 4.2
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