50 JOSEPH PETERSON 



How could she do otherwise after learning is accomplished? 

 Here the success of the final act was inevitable by the con- 

 ditions of the experiment. The final high degree of success is 

 the result of the learning, how, then, can it get around to 

 come in at the front door as one of the causative factors? 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 

 The "principles of learning" frequency, recency, and intensity, 

 in their usually accepted meaning, have been found inadequate 

 to account for learning in the maze. Probability laws alone 

 make possible a sufficient number of right choices for the rat 

 to reach the food box finally in the ordinary maze. The 

 probability of reaching the food box by mere chance rapidly 

 decreases with the increase in the number of cul de sacs in the 

 maze. But it is found that on laws of pure fortuity there is no 

 explanation for the elimination of cul de sacs; for since the 

 probability of entering any blind alley on returns as well as on 

 forward runs is 1/2, the habit of continuing to enter them should 

 be as strong as that of keeping the right trail toward the food 

 box. For learning to be possible, some sort of short-circuiting 

 process must take place by which the true, path may be suggested 

 for the line of action when the animal gets to the entrance of 

 any blind alley. It is not clear how any of the usually accepted 

 laws of learning — frequency, recency, and intensity — can operate 

 to bring this about. Frequency and recency fail entirely to 

 account for the behavior of the rat in the maze. The real 

 jjrocess of learning, the gradual elimination of unsuccessful 

 random acts, such as entrances to cul de sacs and returns toward 

 the entrance place in the maze, must be accounted for on the 

 basis of some entirely different principle. The principles named 

 show only how an act, directed by some other factor, becomes 

 gradually more mechanically reflex. 30 



30 Statistically the statement in this paragraph, as well as the one in the first 

 part of the monograph, is inaccurate. An animal coming the first time to a blind 

 alley has a probability of 1/2 of entering it; a probability of 3/4 of continuing in 

 the right direction, whether or not the blind alley is entered; and a probability of 

 1/4 of entering the CUL DE SAC and, from it, returning toward the starting place 

 in the maze. If the animal actually gets by the blind alley in question, enters one 

 farther on and returns in the maze, the conditions are reversed at the first blind 

 alley. Now the probability of continuing back to the starting place in the maze, 

 i.e., either of not entering the blind alley at all or of entering and then continuing 

 in the return direction, is 3/4; that of getting reoriented in the right direction toward 

 the food is 1/4; and that of entering the blind alley is 1/2. Adding these fractions 

 to those above for the respective directions in which the animal can possibly go 



