Discrimination of Rhythmic Displacement by High School, Undergraduate and Graduate Music Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate music students' ability to discriminate the rhythmic deviation of the last tone in a series of six tones that were otherwise equal in duration and occurred at regular intervals. Graduate ( n = 76) and undergraduate ( n = 76) music majors and high school music students ( n = 76) listened to 18 sets of six tones and decided whether the final tone was on time, early or late. Whenever the last tone was identified as occurring early or late, subjects were asked to indicate exactly how early or late. Results indicated that subjects correctly discriminated among on time, early and late presentations 71.4% of the time and were able to discriminate among the discreet rhythmic designations (p = .001). Subjects correctly identified the duration of the discrepancy for only 50% of the items for which the direction of deviation was correctly identified. Overall, musical training did not appear to influence results.