HABIT FORMATION IN THE ALBINO RAT 



53 



that at the eighty-fifth day the food supply was cut down, and 

 on the eighty-ninth* day no food at all was allowed. Probably 

 a better plan would have been to feed the rats in the food box 

 of the maze for a week preceding the retention test, using the 

 same schedule employed in preliminary feeding, and keeping the 

 food box carefully partitioned off from the rest of the maze. 



Seventy-six per cent of the original number of trials were 

 required to relearn, forty-eight per cent of the time necessary 

 for learning was occupied in relearning, and fifty-two per cent 

 of the original amount of distance was covered. The absolute 

 time when learning was seven and nine tenths seconds, when 

 relearning nine seconds. This difference probably being due to 

 the increased age, since the rats were approximately two hundred 

 days old at the time of the retention test and absolute time 

 increases with age. 



Nothing more is shown by the test on retention than that 

 the interval between learning and relearning must be made very 

 much smaller if it is desired to begin a problem with a view to 

 determining the curve of retention. 



The relation of time to distance in learning, and the matter 

 of elimination of alleys in the maze have been discussed at 

 length in papers already published. 



TABLE XIII 



LEARNING 

 Rat Trials Ab. time Total time Distance 



Rat 



RELEARNING AFTER 90 DAYS 

 Trials Ab. time Total time 



Distance 



