Habit Reversal in the Turtle

Abstract

Two groups of mature “painted” turtles were trained in a T-maze. One group had five trials per day, with correct and incorrect turns reversed for each animal whenever it reached the criterion of five errorless trials on a given day. The second group had 10 trials per day, with correct and incorrect turns reversed daily, irrespective of the performance of the animals. Only in the data for the second group did there appear some indication of progressive improvement in habit reversal. The results are considered in relation to those obtained in analogous experiments with other species.