Habit Formation: The Labyrinth Habit 223 



are possible, for it is merely "a turn to the right at the en- 

 trance, to the left at the first doorway, and thereafter alter- 

 nately to the right and to the left until the exit is reached." 

 This concise description would enable a man to find his 

 way out of such a maze with ease. Labyrinth D had been 

 constructed with an exit at 10 so that it might be used as a 

 nine-error maze if the experimenter saw fit, or as a thirteen- 

 error maze by the closing of the opening at 10. In the ex- 

 periments which are now to be described only the latter form 

 was used. 



Can the dancer learn a regular labyrinth path more quickly 

 than an irregular one ? Again, I may give only a brief state- 

 ment of results. Each of the twenty dancers, of Table 

 40, which were trained in labyrinth D had previously been 

 given opportunity to learn the path of C, and most of them 

 had been trained also in labyrinth B. All of them learned 

 this regular path with surprising rapidity. The numerical 

 results of the tests with labyrinths B, C, and D, as well as 

 the behavior of the mice in these several mazes, prove con- 

 clusively that the nature of the errors is far more important 

 than their number. Labyrinth D with its thirteen chances 

 of error on the forward trip was not nearly as difficult for 

 the dancer to learn to escape from as labyrinth C with its 

 five errors. That the facility with which the twenty individ- 

 uals whose records are given in Table 40 learned the path 

 of D was not due to their previous labyrinth experience 

 rather than to the regularity of the maze is proved by the 

 results which I obtained by testing in D individuals which 

 were new to labyrinth experiments. Even in this case, the 

 number of tests necessary for a successful trip was seldom 

 greater than ten. If further evidence of the ease with which 

 a regular labyrinth path may be followed by the dancer 

 were desired, it might be obtained by observation of the 



