The Early Work of Paul Fraisse: The Timing of ‘Spontaneous’ Rhythms

What is it about?

The article discusses Paul Fraisse’s early study of the timing of what he called “spontaneous” rhythms, where people were required to perform a specified sequence of spaced taps on a response key without the times between the responses being controlled. Results come from his doctoral thesis, carried out under the supervision of Albert Michotte in between 1935 and 1937. In spite of the lack of timing instructions, responses were divided into “short times” (around 200 ms), “long times” (usually around 400 ms), and pauses (the times between execution of consecutive rhythmic sequences). This division held over changes in the tap sequence, when different patterns of 3, 4, and 5 responses were produced. Long times tended to have smaller relative variability than short ones. A later experiment varied the length of the total sequence, including the pauses. All responses increased in duration with total sequence length, but the ratio of long to short responses was approximately preserved even with marked changes in total sequence length, although participants were unable to maintain the rhythmical structure at the slowest speed. Fraisse regarded the pause as having a different function than the short and long responses. It changed only slightly when the pattern changed, but marked changes in the duration of the pause did not affect the pattern. Fraisse proposed that the pause was a kind of separator, needed to maintain the rhythmic structure of the patterns.

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