Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1: Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
Science
Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1: Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
Psychology, Experimental
If, then, we assume that the introduction of additional sensation
change into an interval lengthens it, we are led to the conclusion
that psychological time (as distinguished from metaphysical,
mathematical, or transcendental time) is perceived simply as the
quantum of change in the sensation content. That this is a true
conclusion is seemingly supported by the fact that when we wish to
make our estimate correspond as closely as possible with external
measurements, we exclude from the content, to the best of our ability,
the general complex of external sensations, which vary with extreme
irregularity; and confine the attention to the more uniformly varying
bodily sensations. We perhaps go even further, and inhibit certain
bodily sensations, corresponding to activity of the more peripherally
located muscles, that the attention may be confined to certain others.
But attention to a dermal stimulation is precisely the condition which
would tend to some extent to prevent this inhibition. For this reason
we might well expect to find the error in estimation more variable,
the 'constant error' in general greater, and the specific effects of
variations which would affect the peripheral muscles, more marked in
'tactual' time than in either 'auditory' or 'optical' time. Certainly
all these factors appear surprisingly large in these experiments.
It is not possible to ascertain to how great an extent subject _Sh_
inhibited the more external sensations, but certainly if he succeeded
to an unusual degree in so doing, that fact would explain the absence
of effect of stimulation difference in his case.
Explanation has still to be offered for the variable effect of
intensity difference upon the _second_ interval. According to all
subjects except _Sn_, there is a radical difference in attitude in the
two intervals. In the first interval the subject is merely observant,
but in the second he is more or less reproductive. That is, he
measures off a length which seems equal to the standard, and if the
stimulation does not come at that point he is prepared to judge the
interval as 'longer,' even before the third stimulation is given. In
cases, then, where the judgment with equal intensities would be
'longer,' we might expect that the actual strengthening or weakening
of the final tap would make no difference, and that it would make very
little difference in other cases. But even here the expectation of the
intensity is an important factor in determining tension changes,
although naturally much less so than in the first interval. So we
should still expect the lengthening of the second interval.
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