While the subject was consciously enjoying a sound from a tuning-fork
or a tactual impression from some chosen texture surface, one of the
colors was presented to him. The time-interval thus ascertained as
necessary for the new feeling-tone to reach its maximum was compared in
each case with the time-interval when the color alone was presented.
Various combinations were here employed also. Colors in forms in
addition were studied in comparison with the same colors presented
without regard to the enclosing forms. No definite results could be
obtained in most cases. It was thought that the repose one feels
for plush might appreciably hasten the feeling-tone for the red and
probably retard that for the more exciting yellow. The evidence is not
directly conclusive. This was not found to be the case in much more
than half of the tests. It did, however, in the great majority of the
cases with all subjects, retard the time-interval for the development
of the unpleasant character of ordinarily disagreeable colors. Given
at such times also the normally unpleasant colors not infrequently
appeared themselves as slightly agreeable. In these cases the interval
was also appreciably longer, suggesting evidence that new processes of
some sort were set up. A pleasant low tone hastened the arousal of a
pleasant feeling-tone for red quite perceptibly for three subjects, and
had no influence upon the other subjects. The feeling-tone for yellow
under the same circumstances was for two subjects retarded regularly,
with no marked effect either way for the others. The same low tone
retarded all the unpleasant colors, as did the plush, in many cases
causing them to appear as pleasant.
The effect of forms, as enclosures for colors, upon the time-rate was
more marked and constant. Subject I again was always disturbed when
colors were presented to him in definite forms. For him feeling-tones
never arose so quickly when the form-element entered. For the other
six subjects, available for this part of the work, upright ovals
considerably increased the whole state of pleasure whether or not
fusion of the different elements resulted. For them the feeling-tone
for every pleasing color was hastened from two fifths to four fifths
of a second. These same forms retarded the unpleasant colors whenever
one element of the experience seemed to be opposed to the other.
Occasionally here also the color appeared as itself directly and
unaccountably pleasant, the prepared situation of the subject being
such, apparently, that the ordinary character of the color did not
appear at all. This was very frequently the case for all subjects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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