Naturally the modification of settings introduced May 3 greatly
increased the proportion of wrong first choices. Indeed, as appears in
table 8, the ratio of right to wrong immediately changed from 1:0.67 to
1:4.00. Between May 3 and May 10, no steady and consistent improvement
in method or in the number of correct first choices occurred, and on the
last named date, Julius chose correctly only three times in his ten
trials. At this time there was, as my notes record, no satisfactory
indication of progress, and the status of the experiment seemed
extremely unsatisfactory in as much as in spite of the experimenter's
best efforts to break up the habit of choosing the nearest door, the
orang utan still persisted, to a considerable extent, in the use of this
method. The only encouraging feature of the results was an evident
tendency to choose somewhat nearer the left end of a group than
previously.
TABLE 8
Results for Orang utan in Problem 1
========+===========+==============+==============+==============+==============+==============+==============+==============+==============+==============+==============+===+===+===+===+========
| No. | S.1 | S.2 | S.3 | S.4 | S.5 | S.6 | S.7 | S.8 | S.9 | S.10 | | | | | Ratio
Date | of | | | | | | | | | | | R | W | R | W | of
| trials | 1.2.3 | 8.9 | 3.4.5.6.7 | 7.8.9 | 2.3.4.5.6 | 6.7.8 | 5.6.7 | 4.5.6.7.8 | 7.8.9 | 1.2.3 | | | | | R to W
--------+-----------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+---+---+---+---+--------
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
April | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
13 | 1- 10 | 3.1 | 8 | 4.3 | 7 | 4.2 | 7.6 | 5 | 4 | 7 | 3.1 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 1:1.00
14 | 11- 20 | 3.2.1 | 8 | 4.3 | 7 | 4.4.2 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 7 | 3.1 | 6 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 1:0.67
15 | 21- 30 | 3.2.1 | 8 | 4.3 | 7 | 4.5.5.2 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 7 | 3.1 | 6 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 1:0.67
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