Effect of Suggestion and Nature of Stimulus Rhythm on Temporal Estimation

The effect of rhythm and suggestion has been studied extensively, but rarely has the concomitant effects of the two been under scientific scrutiny. Rhythm being composed of distinct temporal components such as pattern, meter, and tempo, is perceived differently by different people. Each feature requires different computational processes: meter involves representing repeating cycles of strong and weak beats; pattern involves representing intervals at each local time point which vary in length across segments and are linked hierarchically; and tempo requires representing frequency rates of underlying pulse structures. (Thaut et al., 2014) On the other hand, different human beings receive and process suggestions in different manners. The way they evaluate suggestions are contingent on their own unique history and mental frame at that particular instance.  In this paper, the effects of rhythm and suggestibility have been studied on 30 male university students. A temporally varied set of 8 regular and irregular beats were customized, with one standard beat. With each set of data, a corresponding set of suggestion was provided to each subject. Results were analysed using Chi-square and it was concluded that the nature of stimulus rhythm, coupled with the inducement of a state of mind through suggestion, has an effect on the fine discrimination abilities of temporal duration of the subjects.