82 The Dancing Mouse 



Chapter VII, p. 92. Figures 14 and 15 will greatly aid the 

 reader in understanding its essential features. Two small 

 wooden boxes, identical in form and as closely similar as 

 possible in general appearance, were placed in a larger box 

 in such positions that a mouse was forced to enter and pass 

 through one of them in order to get to the nest-box. On 

 the bottom of each of these small boxes was a series of wires 

 through which an electric current could be made to pass at 

 the will of the experimenter. The boxes could readily be 

 interchanged in position. At one side of the large wooden 

 box and beyond the range of vision of the mouse was an 

 electric bell which could be caused to ring whenever the 

 mouse approached the entrance to one of the small boxes. 

 The point of the experiment was to determine whether the 

 dancer could learn to avoid the box-which-rang when it was 

 approached. The method of conducting the tests was as 

 follows. Each day at a certain hour the mouse was placed 

 in that part of the large box whence it could escape to the 

 nest-box only by passing through one of the small boxes. If 

 it approached the wrong box (whether .it happened to be 

 the one on the right or the one on the left depended upon 

 the experimenter's decision), the bell began to ring as a 

 warning against entering ; if it approached the other box, all 

 was silent. As motives for the choice of the box-which-did- 

 not-ring both reward and punishment were employed. The 

 reward consisted of freedom to return to the nest-box ma the 

 passage which led from the box-which-did-not-ring ; the 

 punishment, which consisted of a disagreeable electric shock, 

 was given whenever the mouse entered the wrong box, that 

 is, the one which had the sound as a warning. Entering 

 the wrong box resulted in a disagreeable stimulus and in the 

 necessity of returning to the large box, for the exit to the 

 nest-box by way of the passage from this box was closed. 





