PERSEVERANCE REACTIONS IN PRIMATES AND RODENTS 43 



In this case the factor of frequency as such, regardless of 

 the advantage or disadvantage resulting from its operation, could 

 have played only a secondary role since alley No. 4 was entered 

 but once more frequently during the habit forming trials than 

 was alley No. 3 and since, as is shown in table 8, frequency as 

 such was a possible determinant of his first choices in only 

 22% (15% pure frequency and 7% recency-frequency) of his 

 100 formal trials. 



White Rat 10 



This subject was the only representative of his strain. He 

 had 20 recency and 3 recency-frequency first choices. His first 

 choices were distributed as follows: alley No. 1, 17 trials; alley 

 No. 2, 43 trials; alley No. 3, 30 trials; alley No. 4, 10 trials. 

 He entered alley No. 1 90 times, alley No. 2 105 times, alley No. 

 3 100 times and alley No. 4 89 times. 



Although this subject had 15 habit forming trials he did not 

 once enter any other alley than right alley No. 4. This alley 

 is the right one for the one-hundredth formal trial, hence the 

 factor of recency (it is evident that the factor of frequency is 

 of secondary importance in this case) may have accounted for 

 his first choice of alley No. 4 when he was given his first habit 

 forming trial. During the trials that followed both recency and 

 increasing frequency of advantage seem to have determined the 

 habit of trying only alley No. 4. 



VI 



CONCLUSIONS 



1. When a mammalian is confronted by a series of situations 

 for which he is unable to discover and stereotype a specifically 

 adequate and invariably successful mode of response he tends 

 to vary his response in a manner which is less a species than 

 an individual characteristic. 



2. The multiple choice method that was employed in these 

 studies operates against habit formation and favors a varying 

 of modes of searching for a place of exit throughout an entire 

 series of 100 trials. Such variation of response was manifested 

 by a baboon throughout 500 trials. The following types of 

 response were elicited from children, infra-human primates and 

 five different rodent species: 



