Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/410

396 yet again others may be neutral as regards sensor or motor preferences. If this be true, another element of “abounding uncertainty” is introduced into all the results of experiments so far performed in this field, as reflection on the matter will show. It might well be a matter of very great importance in connection with astronomical observations: a source of error which could not be eliminated by any amount of instruction to the observer as to the method of his attention.

And another inference: Why may not reaction-time results be used as a means of diagnosis of speech-troubles? Given an aphasic patient with an unusually short reaction-time, he would be probably (1) motor in type, and, consequently, probably (2) afflicted with trouble in his motor region. On the other hand, a patient with a very long reaction would be auditory or visual in his type. This would require cases of almost artificial simplicity of symptom and lack of ‘sympathetic’ disturbance; but it might be tested by observing the reaction time of patients, the seat of whose brain trouble is already known.

The question of ‘internal song’ is a new one. What do we mean, when we say that a ‘tune is running in our head’? The factors involved are evidently less complex than those involved in speech, at the same time that the entire phenomenon is more obscure. Evidence goes to show that the internal tune is almost entirely auditory: that is, that the auditory center is intrinsic to musical reproduction–Stricker again to the contrary notwithstanding.

An adequate discussion of the nature of tune reproduction should provide a theory of tune perception which takes account of three factors–pitch, time or rhythm, timbre–and possibly of a fourth character, ordinarily designated by the phrase ‘musical expression’ or, more properly, emotional tone.