Modification by Experience 231 



disturbed, while the others were. More investigation, de- 

 cidedly, is needed before we can decide, as Watson does, 

 " either that static sensations have a r61e, or . . that the rat 

 has some non-human modality of sensation which, whatever 

 it may be, is thrown out of gear temporarily by altering the 

 customary relations to the cardinal points of the compass." 



One or two incidental observations regarding the behavior 

 of animals in labyrinths are strongly suggestive of the auto- 

 matic character of the movements involved. An animal that 

 has gone astray on the path will often find the way back to 

 the starting-point, and from there traverse the whole road 

 rapidly and unerringly (e.g. 450, 431), apparently in the same 

 way that a piano player who has a piece " at his fingers' ends," 

 but has stumbled in a passage, can go through with entire 

 success if he starts over again. As piano players know, in 

 such a case it is much better not to attend to stimuli at all, 

 but to think of something else ; the movements will take care 

 of themselves better if consciousness intervenes as little as 

 possible. 



Again, in the process of learning a labyrinth, habits of 

 movement are often formed that are of no use whatever ; that 

 do not lead to success, and hence cannot be guided in any 

 sense by the animal's experience of their pleasant consequences. 

 Rouse and Small both report this tendency to form useless 

 habits, and in the case of some salamanders observed by the 

 writer, which never finally mastered the labyrinth they were 

 placed in, habits of going elaborately wrong would make their 

 appearance and persist for several days, each animal re- 

 maining true to its individually acquired tendency. The 

 mere fact that the movements were accidentally performed 

 two or three times in succession created a persistence in doing 

 them, although they led to no pleasurable consequences what- 

 ever. 



