182 STELLA B. VINCENT 



THE X MAZE RE-LEARNED AS THE Y MAZE 



That the habits set up in the two mazes were inherently of 

 different type was shown by the following experiment: After 

 the group of animals whose records are given for the X maze 

 in table 1 had learned the maze the sides were removed and the 

 rats were tried again. Kinaesthesis had apparently been firmly 

 established during the first experiment and while some dis- 

 turbance was to be expected, it was thought that it might affect 

 the runs of but one day. The outcome shows the danger of 

 supposing anything about animals. These rats had to relearn 

 the maze almost as if it were a new problem. The old habits 

 did not meet the situation. The animals went out upon the 

 maze with flattened, crawling bodies; they clung to the edges 

 with their toes, they followed these edges with their vibrissae; 

 they used apparently every tactual-cutaneous help possible. 

 While the fewer initial and total errors seem rather good evi- 

 dence that something was carried over from one maze to the 

 other, the fact that it took over eleven trials on an average for 

 the relearning, as well as the evidence of the observed behavior, 

 indicates that the habit had to be re-established through new 

 sensory aids. A summary of the numerical data may be seen 

 in the last column of table 1. 



The maze pattern was the same. The kinaesthetic series was 

 the same: the distances, turns, all that goes to form what Pro- 

 fessor Watson calls a kinaesthetic element, but the other sensory 

 elements, always present in the kinaesthetic complex, light, 

 possibly odor and sound but chiefly touch had greatly changed. 

 Always, as the rat ran in the X maze, his sides and vibrissae 

 brushed the walls, the projecting partitions and the angles of 

 the box. All at once this part of the sensory experience was 

 gone. It could be and it was replaced but with a tactual ex- 

 perience of another sort requiring very different adjustments. 

 In addition there was the necessity for the finer adjustments 

 previously mentioned. Thus the problem became a new one. 

 The position which I desire to maintain here and upon which 

 I desire to lay emphasis is that, while in a fully formed habit 

 kinaesthesis probably predominates as a control, the sensory 

 experience is never purely kinaesthesis but always a complex and 

 the finer are the adjustments which need to be made the more 

 necessary the associated sense qualities of vision and touch become. 



