RATE OF LEARNING IN THE WHITE RAT 23 



ignored the buzzer, but also the negative response to pain often 

 broke down. 



TABLE VI 



Animal Trials % on Last 100 



43 229 92 



45 226 91 



46 217 9i 



47 224 90 



48 274 90 



49 280 93 

 51 288 89 



Average 248.3 90.9 



In other words, if the animal failed to turn for the buzzer 

 he also often failed to turn for the pain and continued his 

 course toward the food-box until he encounted the closed door. 

 This same thing happened in all the groups but not so frequently 

 as in this one. This common period of confusion prehaps ac- 

 counts for the larger number of trials necessary for this group 

 to master the association. 



Summary. The results for these five groups are brought to- 

 gether in Table VII. From these results the following con- 



TABLE VII 



Group Time Interval Trials 



II o seconds 



III i " 



IV 2 " 

 V 4 " 



VI 6 " 



Average 192.3 



elusions are warranted: i. Measured in terms of the number 

 of trials necessary to learn the association, the difficulty of mak- 

 ing the transfer of response does not increase uniformly for the 

 increase in the length of the time interval between the two stimuli 

 presented. 2. There is a disproportionate increase in dif- 

 ficulty when the interval is increased from one to two seconds. 

 3. There is practically no increase in difficulty when the interval 



