Abstract
The aim of this study was to get an evidence of latent learning. 49 naive albino rats ran in the T-maze. The right arm and goal box of it.was painted light gray, and the left arm and goal box was painted black.The choice point and the stem of it was also painted neutral gray. Further, wood-shavings were put in the right goal box.
4 trials were given per day for 6 days, and the half of these were to the right and the other half were to the left. In all training period, food was introduced in the both goal boxes.
After this training, food was removed from the goal boxes, and each rat was put and confined in one empty goal box, which was preferred in the training period. This procedure was called “extinction.” After this, one test trial was given
.The results obtained were as follows.
(1) When the extinction was done in another room with another boxes of the same size and color as the goal boxes of the maze, the result was negative to the latent learning. (Exp.I)
(2) When the extinction was done in the goal box of the maze for three minutes and the test was given immediately after it, the result was positive. (Exp. II)
(3) When the extinction was done for two minutes and this was repeated two times with the interval of about 15 minutes, and the test was given after about 15 minutes, the result was positive. (Exp. III)
(4) When the rats ran to the goal box by themselves and were confined there for three minutes, the result of the test after 10 minutes was almost the same as the mentioned above (Exp. IV). This was the control experiment.
According to these results, we concluded that our experiments clearly demonstrated the latent learning.
