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 amphibrachic form, | >q q. q |, is more difficult to maintain than
either the dactylic or the trochaic, and in a continuous series tends
to pass over into one of these, usually the former. 'With sufficient
pause,' the reactors report, 'to allow the attitude to die away,' it
is easily got. The same inability to maintain this form in
consciousness appears when a continuous series of clicks is given,
every third of which is louder than the rest. Even when the beginning
of the series is made coincident with the initial phase of the
amphibrachic group the rhythmic type slips over into the dactylic, in
spite of effort. In this, as in the preceding type of reaction, if the
interval separating adjacent groups be lengthened, the rhythm is
maintained without trouble. The 'dying away' of the attitude lies
really in such an arrangement of the intervals as will formally
complete a phrase made up of simple two-beat units.
The positive evidence which this investigation affords, points to the
existence of factors of composition in all rhythms of more than three
beats; and a variety of peculiarities which the results present can be
explained--and in my estimation explained only--on the basis of such
an assumption. I conclude, therefore, that strictly stated the
numerical limit of simple rhythm groups is very soon reached; that
only two rhythmical units exist, of two and three beats respectively;
that in all longer series a resolution into factors of one of these
types takes place; and, finally, that the subordination of higher
rhythmical quantities of every grade involves these simple relations,
of which, as the scope of the synthesis increases, the opposition of
simple alternate phases tends more and more to predominate over
triplicated structures.
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