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

Abstract

Abstract 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 Louvain/Leuven in Belgium 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 450 ms), and ‘pauses’ (the times between execution of consecutive rhythmic sequences). This division held over changes in the tap sequence, when different patterns of three, four, and five responses were produced. A later experiment varied total sequence duration, including the pauses, and the ratio of long to short times was approximately preserved even with marked changes in sequence duration, except at the slowest speed. Fraisse regarded the pause as having a different function from the short and long times. It changed only slightly when the pattern changed, but marked changes in the duration of the pause did not affect the pattern. Fraisse suggested it was a kind of separator, needed to maintain the rhythmic structure of the patterns, and used the idea of a temporal ‘Gestalt’ where the pause represented the ‘ground’ or ‘framework’ and the rhythmic sequence the ‘Figure ’.