THE FORMATION OF HABITS AT HIGH SPEED 167 



During the experiments, the tank was filled, sometimes with warm, 

 sometimes cold water; salt was added on some occasions, whereas 

 on others additional stimuli were administered while the ani- 

 mals were falling through the shoot or after they had emerged 

 through the open door. As there are four openings, any one of 

 which may be made the correct one, and as the contents of the 

 tank may be varied in many ways, and the experiences on enter- 

 ing and emerging complicated as much as one desires, the 

 tank is in a real sense, labyrinthine, although simple in con- 

 struction. 



GENERAL RESULTS 



It is needless to say that an inexperienced animal suddenly 

 thrust into a tank of water makes strenuous efforts to escape. 

 Under the conditions of the experiments it is not surprising that 

 a high degree of variability should attach to the several attempts 

 of an animal forced to undergo the experience of the tank half a 

 dozen times in succession. Nevertheless there is an underlying 

 regularity, for the time taken to escape in 83 per cent of the cases 

 is less at the last attempt than at the first, whereas in 16 percent 

 it is greater, and in only 1 per cent unchanged. 



Time records, while the most convenient form of registration, 

 are nevertheless not the only ways in which the formation of a 

 habit manifests itself. Very much to the point in this connection 

 are tracings of the actual pathway pursued in escaping. Six 

 such graphic representations are given in fig. 2, and show con- 

 clusively that the first turn of the path that led to the first escape 

 occurs, often much abbreviated, and regardless of advantage, in 

 nearly all of the succeeding trials. 



In experiments into which so many complicating factors enter 

 a regular and machine-like progress toward perfection cannot be 

 expected, and its failure to appear is clearly shown in series A and 

 B. Records C and D, however, illustrate distinctly how the path 

 followed was simplified until in the last trials it became to all 

 intents and purposes a straight line. Hand in hand with this 

 was a reduction in the amount of time taken to effect the escape. 



