CURIOSITY AND SPONTANEOUS ALTERNATION

A review of literature indicated that either reactive inhibition or curiosity may explain the phenomenon of spontaneous alternation. A set of experiments was conducted to identify the relationship between these two drives. Six experimentally naive rhesus monkeys were used for this study. In one exepriment, if the monkeys pushed against and opened the door of a modified WGTA, they were permitted 10sec to look into the surroundings of a pink board settled behind the door. The E initiated each experimental period of 15min a day by raising the opaque screen and exposing the doors to the animals. Number of trials of looking into-behavior was recorded. In another experiment, after all the animals became not to show the curiosity of looking-into, a food reward, instead of a visual exploration incentive, was used for the test of spontaneous alternation in the same apparatus so arranged that only reactive inhibition did work. The six animals were given fifty-one trials a day for nine days. The results were: 1. Curiosity in the rhesus monkeys disappeared in a relatively short term (Table 3), but it recovered in about 23 hours. Curiosity was maintained for about eight days (Table 1). Marked individual differences of curiosity were found in the monkeys (Table 2). 2. The percentage of spontaneous alternation appeared relatively low in monkeys (Fig. 1). No statistically significant differences were obtained both between the nine days and between the five sessions of ten trials each. Individual differences in alternation were found (Table 5). 3. Of greatest interest, however, was a significant positive correlation coefficientt between spontaneous alternation and curiosity. In addition, a factor analysis by the T technique showed that two typical factors were responsible for both of the two behaviors, although their loadings and variances were different from each other (Table 6). One factor was concave in the configuration of the loadings for the nine days, and another was convex (Fig. 2). The former was interpreted as the adaptation-to-situation factor, the latter as the investigation/or curiosity factor. No single factor represented by the concept of inhibition was found. Inhibition was supposed to affect the two factor loadings. It was also suggested that inhibition would increase as a result of the repetition of the investigatory reflex.