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
In comparing the variations in stress which the rhythmical material
presents, the average intensities of reaction for the whole group has
been computed, as well as the intensities of the single reactions
which compose it. This has been done chiefly in view of the unstable
intensive configuration of the group and the small amount of material
on which the figures are based. The term is relative; in ascertaining
the relations of intensity among the several members of the group, at
least ten successive repetitions, and in a large part of the work
fifty, have been averaged. This is sufficient to give a clear
preponderance in the results to those characteristics which are really
permanent tendencies in the rhythmical expression. This is especially
true in virtue of the fact that throughout these experiments the
subject underwent preliminary training until the series of reactions
could be easily carried out, before any record of the process was
taken. But when such material is analyzed in larger and smaller series
of successive groups the number of reactions on which each average is
based becomes reduced by one half, three quarters, and so on. In such
a case the prevailing intensive relations are liable to be interfered
with and transformed by the following factor of variation. When a
wrong intensity has accidentally been given to a particular reaction
there is observable a tendency to compensate the error by increasing
the intensity of the following reaction or reactions. This indicates,
perhaps, the presence of a sense of the intensive value of the whole
group as a unity, and an attempt to maintain its proper relations
unchanged, in spite of the failure to make exact coördination among
the components. But such a process of compensation, the disappearance
of which is to be looked for in any long series, may transpose the
relative values of the accented elements in two adjacent groups when
only a small number of reactions is taken into account, and make that
seem to receive the major stress which should theoretically receive
the minor, and which, moreover, does actually receive such a minor
stress when the value of the whole group is regarded, and not solely
that member which receives the formal accentuation.
The quantitative analysis of intensive relations begins with triple
rhythms, since its original object was to compare the relative
stresses of the unaccented elements of the rhythmic group. These
values for the three forms separately are given in Table XXII., in
which the value of the accented element in each case is represented by
unity.
TABLE XXII.
Rhythm. 1st Beat. 2d Beat. 3d Beat.
Dactylic, 1.000 0.436 0.349
Amphibrachic, 0.488 1.000 0.549
Anapæstic, 0.479 0.484 1.000
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