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
The rhythmical differentiation of phases is greatest at the slowest
tempo included in the series, namely, one beat per second, and it
declines as the rate of succession increases. It is impossible from
this curve to say, however, that the subjective rhythmization of
uniform material becomes more pronounced in proportion as the
intervals between the successive stimulations increase. Below a
certain rapidity the series of sounds fails wholly to provoke the
rhythmizing tendency; and it is conceivable that a change in the
direction of the curve may occur at a point beyond the limits included
within these data.
The introduction from time to time of a single extra tap, with the
effect of transposing the relations of the motor accompaniment to the
phases of the metronome, has been here interpreted as arising from a
periodically recurring adjustment of the reaction process to the
auditory series which it accompanies, and from which it has gradually
diverged. The departure is in the form of a slow retardation, the
return is a swift acceleration. The retardation does not always
continue until a point is reached at which a beat is dropped from, or
an extra one introduced into, the series. In the course of a set of
reactions which presents no interpolation of extra-serial beats
periodic retardation and acceleration of the tapping take place. This
tertiary rhythm, superimposed on the differentiation of simple phases,
has, as regards the forms involved in the present experiments, a
period of ten single beats or five measures.
From the fact that this rhythm recurs again and again without the
introduction of an extra-serial beat it is possible to infer the
relation of its alternate phases to the actual rate of the metronome.
Since the most rapid succession included was two beats per second, it
is hardly conceivable that the reactor lost count of the beats in the
course of his tapping. If, therefore, the motor series in general
parallels the auditory, the retardations below the actual metronome
rate must be compensated by periods of acceleration above it. Regarded
in this light it becomes questionable if what has been called the
process of readjustment really represents an effort to restore an
equilibrium between motor and auditory processes after an involuntary
divergence. I believe the contrasting phases are fundamental, and that
the changes represent a free, rhythmical accompaniment of the
objective periods, which themselves involve no such recurrent
differentiation.
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