RETENTION OF HABITS BY THE RAT 



15 



SUMMARY OF RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTS 



The records of time and errors have been summarized in table 

 1. From the averages it appears that the rats which were not 

 overtrained required 29 per cent less time for the first 15 trials 

 after the destruction of the frontal lobes and made 53 per cent 



TABLE 1 



The time required for reaching the food and the number of errors made by rats in 

 learning the maze and in the retention tests after the destruction of 



the frontal lobes 

 Animals without overtraining- 



Animals overtrained 



fewer errors than they did in learning the maze. This in itself 

 is evidence for a partial retention of the habit. When consid- 

 ered in connection with the data on their behavior in the maze it 

 shows that there was little if any loss that can not be accounted 

 for by the distracting effects of the head bandages and the gen- 

 eral shock effects of the operation. None of the animals showed 



