234 HAROLD E. BURTT 



on the first two settings, employing his customary method of 

 reaction. 



J manifested, like A, a tendency to go down the right wall 

 of the reaction chamber to compartment No. 1 and then in front 

 of the closed doors to the first open one. He was often, how- 

 ever, premature in turning to the left thus missing the first open 

 door, and he often lost the latter part of his habit and passed 

 several open doors without entering. As contrasted with A, 

 he was less ready in recovery from mistakes. Both solved the 

 problem in 170 trials, but whereas with A there were 17 trials 

 in which more than one incorrect choice was made before the 

 correct one, there were 31 such trials with J. It is to be remem- 

 bered that J was inbred and A outbred. 



C was extremely rapid in her motions, rushing toward the 

 compartments the moment she was released from the entrance 

 box. In her correct trials the total time from entrance-box, 

 through the compartment and alleys to the food was fre- 

 quently 5 seconds. She often ran along the back alley so rapidly 

 that she slipped and fell at the turn into the side alley. This 

 tendency to hasten was perhaps instrumental in her failure to 

 solve the problem in less than 350 trials. She usually appeared 

 to take her orientation from door No. 1, going thence leftward 

 to the correct door. The settings comprising doors at the left 

 proved easy by this method. The most noticeable thing about 

 her behavior was the suddenness with which she sometimes 

 became thus oriented. Frequently when pausing and looking 

 in the wrong door, or smelling about in almost any part of the 

 reaction-chamber she would suddenly dash to door No. 1 and 

 then across into the correct one. It is possible that this is the 

 same phenomenon mentioned by Watson, 3 where a trained rat, 

 placed in a part of the maze other than the entrance, runs about 

 at random and suddenly darts off correctly, having passed over 

 a "kinaesthetic unit" which arouses a proper sequence of kinaes- 

 thetic impulses. 



Problem 2, which is definable as the second mechanism from 

 the left end of the group, proved insoluble for the two rats C 

 and B in 800 and 900 trials respectively. 



For the settings of this problem the total number of open 

 doors is 50 with 10 of course correct. Hence the probability of 



Watson, J. B. Behavior. New York, 1914, p. 218. 



