THE WHITE RAT AND THE MAZE PROBLEM 



13 



These individual records show the type of behavior described 

 above, which clearly is not like that seen in the normal maze 

 in the first and second trials. There, the rats cover three or 

 four times the distance and make twice the number of errors. 

 Here, the total distance traversed in the true path in trial one 

 was 93 ft., making the rate about 2 ft. per minute. It is true 

 that the rats were not moving all of the time but neither were 

 the rats in the normal maze although they are far more active. 

 The total distance covered in the true path in the second trial 



Fig. 3. 



Learning curves of 20 rats on the black-white maze 

 Time, Errors 



was 135 ft. The rate, therefore, was but little less than 5 ft. 

 per minute. If the activity had been evenly distributed over 

 the maze, this rat, in its first trial, should have been in the 

 false path 18 minutes and in its second trial 13 minutes. 



From the figures of the rats in the normal maze I took those 

 of the rat whose time and error records most nearly approached 

 the average and computed the total distance, etc., for the first 

 and second trials in the same way as above. This rat's time was 

 a little low, so the speed is probably a little high for the first 

 trial. The first trial showed a total distance covered of 313 ft. 

 of which 190 ft. was in the true path and 123 ft. was in the 



