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 inter- 

 esting 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 laby- 

 rinth experiments which were planned as means of measuring 

 the intelligence of the dancer. 



The four labyrinths which have been used in the investi- 

 gation may be designated as A, B, C, and D. They differ 

 from one another in the character of their errors, as well as 

 in the number of wrong choices of a path which the animal 

 might make on its way from entrance to exit. In the use 

 of the labyrinth method, as in the case of the discrimination 

 method of earlier chapters, the steps by which a satisfactory 

 form of labyrinth for testing the dancer was discovered are 

 quite as interesting and important for those who have an 

 intelligent appreciation of the problems and methods of ani- 

 mal psychology as are the particular results which were ob- 

 tained. For this reason, I shall describe the various forms 

 of labyrinth in the order in which they were used, whether 

 they proved satisfactory or not. At the outset of this part of 

 my investigation, it was my purpose to compare directly 

 the capacity for habit formation in the dancer with that of 



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