The Dancing Mouse eBook

To this evidence of a lack of an imitative tendency in the dancer I may here add the results of my observations in other experiments.  In the discrimination tests and in the labyrinth tests I purposely so arranged conditions, in certain instances, that one individual should have an opportunity to imitate another.  In no case did this occur.  Seldom indeed did the animals so much as follow one another with any considerable degree of persistence.  They did not profit by one another’s acts.

Excellent evidence in support of this conclusion was furnished by the behavior of the mice in the discrimination experiments.  Some individuals learned to pull as well as to push the swinging wire doors of the apparatus and were thus enabled to pass through the doorways in either direction; other individuals learned only to pass through in the direction in which the doors could be pushed open.  Naturally I was interested to discover whether those which knew only the trick of opening the doors by pushing would learn to pull the doors or would be stimulated to try by seeing other individuals do so.  At first I arranged special tests of imitation in the discrimination box; later I observed the influence of the behavior of one mouse upon that of its companion in connection with visual discrimination experiments.  This was made possible by the fact that usually a pair of individuals was placed in the discrimination box and the tests given alternately to the male and to the female.  Both individuals had the freedom of the nest-box and each frequently saw the other pass through the doorway between the nest-box, A, and the entrance chamber, B (Figure 14), either from A to B by pushing the swing door or from B to A by pulling the door.

Although abundant opportunity for imitation in connection with the opening of the doors in the discrimination box was given to twenty-five individuals, I obtained no evidence of ability to learn by imitation.  The dancers did not watch the acts which were performed by their companions, and in most instances they did not attempt to follow a mate from nest-box to entrance chamber.

These problem tests, simple as they are, have revealed two important facts concerning the educability of the dancer.  First, that it does not learn by imitation to any considerable extent, and, second, that it is aided by being put through an act.  Our general conclusion from the results of the experiments which have been described in this chapter, if any general conclusion is to be drawn thus prematurely, must be that the dancing mouse in its methods of learning differs markedly from other mice and from rats.

CHAPTER XIII

HABIT FORMATION:  THE LABYRINTH HABIT

The problem method, of which the ladder and door-opening tests of the preceding chapter are examples, has yielded interesting results concerning the individual initiative, ingenuity, motor ability, and ways of learning of the dancer; but it has not furnished us with accurate measurements of the rapidity of learning or of the permanency of the effects of training.  In this chapter I shall therefore present the results of labyrinth experiments which were planned as means of measuring the intelligence of the dancer.