[Dominant factors of rat behavior in response to stimuli in stages]

The adequacy of a modified variant of alimentary Y-maze method used by the authors was tested by studying the role of visual stage stimuli in reaction of free choice in rats. It is shown that the role of visual information is insignificant for acquiring the motor habit--finding of the shortest way to food. The dominant factors are: location of the shortest way, changing of which leads to a search behaviour by the method of "trials and errors", as well as ecologically adequate preference of edges to the center of the "distributor" and motor pretuning of the animal. Observed fixation of the choice of longer ways in comparison with the shortest one, and its stability may be explained by insufficient difference in the ways length before the reinforcement for the transformation of the habit of spatial-motor orientation into a visual one.