PERSEVERANCE REACTIONS IN PRIMATES AND RODENTS 27 



Nine-year old Girl 17, with a record of 14 D-reactions, belongs 

 to a highly distractible, prematurely erotic type of native (Mex- 

 ican) California children who are the despair of local school 

 teachers. Distractibility in school during the period of awak- 

 ening erotic interests, unwillingness or inability to attend to 

 things toward which there is no instinctive inclination and easy 

 excitahil'ty are, of course, more or less characteristic of most 

 children. But these traits are present in an extreme degree in 

 children of the type to which I refer. Girl 18, with 11 D-reac- 

 tions, belongs to this type. 



Girl 11, with \3 D-reactions, was in more or less constant 

 terror of an embarrassing enuresis which was especially apt to 

 assert itself during the experiments. She is a naturally intel- 

 ligent, attentive child, and would probably have given me 

 records similar to those of the children of my earlier studies 

 had she not thus been handicapped. 



Girl 15, with 10 D-reactions, is unusually excitable. During 

 her trials she would rush impulsively from alley to alley, up- 

 braiding herself all the while for her stupidity. Girl 6, with 

 9 of these reactions in 90 trials, was a homesick, listless, dejected 

 newcomer to the orphanage. She wandered through the appa- 

 ratus in apparent indifTerence to the problem before her. 



Monkey 16's variation from the average from his group is 

 sufficiently marked to require explanation: he had only 2 D- 

 reactions, whilst Baboon 2, the individual of the baboon-monkey 

 group whose record of these reactions most nearly approximates 

 his own, had 8 such reactions during his first 100 trials. Mon- 

 key 16, who was " Sobke " of Yerkes' subsequent experiments 

 (4), is less easily distracted or excited than is any other monkey 

 of which I have knowledge. 



Type E Reactions are wholly absent from the records of 12 

 of the 20 girls, and only four of these subjects have more of 

 these reactions than the low average for the group. As might 

 have been expected, three-year old Girls 1 and 2 displayed more 

 of the primitive Type E reactions than did any of the older 

 girls with the exception of the two special cases to be cited. 

 Girl 8, sister of Girl 12, has already been discussed in the para- 

 graph devoted to an explanation of the occurrence of D-reac- 

 tions in the girls' records. This five-year old girl, like her 

 sister, was bashful, easilv distracted and more attentive to the 



