246 The Dancing Mouse 



The results of the continuous training method for these 

 two mice were so strikingly different from those yielded by 

 the other methods that I at once suspected the influence of 

 some factor other than that of the number of tests per day. 

 The ages of Nos. 51 and 60 at the time of their tests were 

 twenty-two and seventeen weeks, respectively, whereas all 

 the individuals used in connection with the other efficiency 

 tests were four weeks of age. It seemed possible that the 

 slow habit formation exhibited in the continuous training 

 experiments might be due to the greater age of the mice. I 

 therefore selected a healthy active female which was only 

 eight weeks old, and tried to train her by the continuous 

 training method. With this individual, No. 87, the results 

 were even more discouraging than those previously obtained, 

 for she was still imperfect in her discrimination at the end of 

 two hundred and ten tests. At that point the experiment 

 was interrupted, and it seemed scarcely worth while to con- 

 tinue it further at a later date. The evidence of the extremely 

 low efficiency of the continuous method in comparison with 

 the other methods which we have been considering is so con- 

 clusive that further comment seems superfluous. 



We are now in a position to compare the results of the 

 several methods of training which have been applied to the 

 dancer, and to attempt to get satisfactory quantitative ex- 

 pressions of the efficiency of each method. I have arranged 

 in Table 46 the general averages yielded by the four methods. 

 Although these general results hide certain important facts 

 which will be exhibited later, they clearly indicate that an 

 increase in the number of tests per day does not necessarily 

 result in an increase in the rapidity of habit formation. 

 Should we attempt, on superficial examination, to interpret 

 the figures of this table, we would doubtless say that in effi- 

 ciency the two-five-test method stands first, the continuous- 



