CHAPTER XIV 

 HABIT FORMATION: THE DISCRIMINATION METHOD 



DISCRIMINATION is demanded of an animal in almost all 

 forms of the problem and labyrinth methods, as well as in 

 what I have chosen to call the discrimination method. In 

 the latter, however, discrimination as the basis of a correct 

 choice of an electric-box is so obviously important that it 

 has seemed appropriate to distinguish this particular method 

 of measuring the intelligence of the dancer from the others 

 which have been used, by naming it the discrimination method. 



It has been shown that neither the problem nor the labyrinth 

 method proves wholly satisfactory as a means of measuring 

 the rapidity of learning, or the duration of the effects of train- 

 ing, in the case of the dancer. The former type of test serves 

 to reveal to the experimenter the general nature of the ani- 

 mal's capacity for profiting by experience; the latter serves 

 equally well to indicate the parts which various receptors 

 (some of which are sense organs) play in the formation and 

 execution of habits. But neither of them is sufficiently simple, 

 easy of control, uniform as to conditions which constitute 

 bases for activity, and productive of interpretable quanti- 

 tative results to render it satisfactory. The problem method 

 is distinctly a qualitative method, and, in the case of the danc- 

 ing mouse, my experiments have proved that the labyrinth 

 method also yields results which are more valuable quali- 

 tatively than quantitatively. I had anticipated that various 

 forms of the labyrinth method would enable me to measure 



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