THE FORMATION OF HABITS AT HIGH SPEED 183 



thought of as a sequence of states which will be repeated, provided 

 the physiological state of the animal remains favorable, whenever 

 the stimuli that started it in the first place retmr. 



It is here that any sensations associated with the beginning of 

 a solution may come into play. Unfortunately, I have no results 

 to offer on this subject at present, but the standpoint itself may 

 not be without value. If kinsesthesia is indeed a special element 

 in the sum total of internal conditions, is in fact a chain, based 

 on the physiological, and expressed objectively in the habit, the 

 answer to a difficult problem may be a little easier to find than 

 heretofore. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 



My purposes in presenting these results have been to show the 

 adequacy of the tank as an instrument for studying animal 

 behavior; to show that our usual methods leave out of consider- 

 ation a large range of interesting activities; and finally to demon- 

 strate that behavior, limited to brief periods of very intense 

 exertion under stress, may lead to the formation of habits. 



Incidentally, the results seem to corroborate, as far as they go, 

 some of the conclusions set forth in Watson's splendid work, 

 and wherever at variance, are so probably from the differences 

 between the problem of the maze, and the problem of the tank. 

 In certain ways, the latter seems well suited for studying the 

 "direction sense" or whatever it is that in the absence of sight, 

 hearing, smell, and touch, enables the animals, not only to solve 

 the problem, but to improve in efficiency. If kinsesthesia plays 

 an important role, if indeed it is by this means that the animals 

 sense direction, and if furthermore, it is a sequence of states, 

 dependent on the physiological condition of the animal, and on 

 certain initiating stimuli, then by variations in the last two cate- 

 gories, one should get changes in kinsesthesia, which in turn would 

 be registered by corresponding differences in the objective habit. 



Accepted by The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, March 18, 1910. Printed July 7, 1910. 



