Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 757 pages of information about Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1.

Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 757 pages of information about Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1.

The percentage given in the case of the highest ratio is based on the reports of two subjects only, one of them the exceptional observer commented on in connection with two-beat rhythms; for all other participants the anapaestic form had already replaced the dactylic.  The distribution of values which supports psychological uniformity in this rhythmic figure lies between the ratios 1.166, 1.000, 0.800, and 1.250, 1.000, 0.755, since in this region the proportion of errors in judgment on either side becomes inverted.  The two rhythmic forms, therefore, present no important differences[7] in the relations which support psychological uniformity.  A comparison in detail of the distribution of judgments in the two cases reveals a higher percentage of plus and minus, and a lower percentage of equality judgments throughout the changes of relation in the dactylic form than in the trochaic.  This appears to indicate a greater rhythmical integration in the former case than in the latter.  On the one hand, the illusion of isolation from adjacent groups is greater at every point at which the intervening interval is actually reduced below the value of either of the internal intervals in the dactylic than in the trochaic rhythm; and on the other, the sensitiveness to differences in the whole series is less in the case of the trochee than in that of the dactyl, if we may take the higher percentage of cases in which no discrimination has been made in the former rhythm as a negative index of such sensibility.

   [7] The ratios of initial to final intervals in the two cases
   are, for trochaic measures, 1.400:1.000, and for dactylic,
   1.400(to 1.666):1.000.

TABLE L.

Ration of Unaccented        Unaccented Interval Judged to be
to Accented Interval.      +                =               —
1.000 :  2.428                                         100.0 per cent
1.000 :  2.000        20.0 per cent.   33.3 per cent    46.7    "
1.000 :  1.666        33.2    "        23.9    "        42.9    "
1.000 :  1.400        39.0    "        46.0    "        15.0    "
1.000 :  1.182        60.0    "        37.2    "         2.8    "
1.000 :  1.000        85.4    "        12.2    "         2.4    "
1.000 :  0.846        89.2    "        10.8    "
1.000 :  0.714       100.0    "
1.000 :  0.660        96.0    "         4.0    "

The increase in the number of inverted forms which occur is cooerdinated percentually in the following table with the successive increments of difference between the accented and unaccented intervals of the group: 

TABLE LI.

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Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.