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
It is in virtue of its nature as an impression, as opposed to a
construction, that every structural unit, and every rhythmical
sequence into which it enters, possesses a distinct individual
quality, by which it is immediately apprehended and discriminated from
other forms, as the face of an acquaintance is remembered and
identified without detailed knowledge of the character of any feature
it possesses. For what persists from the reception of a rhythm
impression and becomes the basis of future recognition and
reproduction of it, is not the number of beats in a unit or sequence,
nor the absolute or relative intensity of the components of the group;
it is the quality of the groups as individuals, and the form of the
sequence as a whole. The phrase and verse are as vividly conceived as
the unit group; the stanza or the passage is apprehended as
immediately and simply as the bar or the measure. Of the number and
relation of the individual beats constituting a rhythmical sequence
there is no awareness whatever on the part of the æsthetic subject. I
say this without qualification. So long as the rhythmical impression
endures the analytic unit is lost sight of, the synthetic unit, or
group, is apprehended as a simple experience. When the rhythm function
is thoroughly established, when the structural form is well integrated
or familiar, it becomes well-nigh impossible to return to the analytic
attitude and discern the actual temporal and intensive relations which
enter into the rhythm. Even the quality of the organic units may lapse
from distinct consciousness, and only a feeling of the form of the
whole sequence remain. The _Gestaltsqualität_ of the passage or the
stanza is thus frequently appreciated and reproduced without an
awareness of its sequential relations, though with the keenest sense
of what is necessary to, or inconsistent with, its structure; so that
the slightest deviation from its form is remarked and the whole
sequence accurately reproduced.
In order to isolate and exhibit the tendency toward rhythmization in
regularly repeated motor reactions, one should examine series of
similar movements made at different rates both as an accompaniment to
a recurrent auditory stimulus and as free expressions of the motor
impulse independent of such objective control. In the former of these
cases the series of stimuli should be undifferentiated in quality as
well as uniform in time. The rhythm which appears in such a case will
contradict the phases of an objective series which prescribes its
form, and the evidence of its existence, presented under such adverse
conditions, should be indubitable.
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