12 



turns from the error record, and of making no attempt to eval- 

 uate varying degrees of error gives a curvo which ia not only 

 worthless hut false" fp. 156). She says further: "The total 

 distance criterion presents so many difficulties as to render 

 it imrracticahle for ordinary v.ork. One difficulty lies in 

 the natter of taking records accurately. The rats, after a 

 few trials, run so rapidly that it is extremely difficult for 

 one person to observe and record at the same time. To do this, 

 it is necessary to mark off the maze into small segments and 

 commit to memory some scheme of representation so that records 

 can be jotted down in a purely automatic manner. The work of 

 transcribing this record into distance terms and computing the 

 same is very laborious. Eliminating these practical difficul - 

 ties, the distance criterion is in some ways an ideal one. 

 (italics mine.) There can be no divergence of practice as to 

 what shall be omitted or included and results obtained by dif- 

 ferent experiments ui on the same maze will be strictly compar- 

 able." (page 154) "The distance and error criteria are funda- 

 mentally alike. The distance curve is the better representa- 

 tive of the progressive approximation of the act towards auto- 

 matic accuracy. It portrays all the details of this elimina- 

 tive process and it approximates the ideal of uniformity and 

 regularity of descent. However, it is impracticable from the 

 standpoint of recording and manipulating the data." 



These practical difficulties in "recording and manipulat- 

 ing the data" have been cvercome, at least where small animals 

 are the subjects used in the maze. The total distance can be 



