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The effects of 12 different delay intervals were studied in a musical task involving performance on an electronic organ. Disruption was found to occur to a degree comparable to similar studies involving verbal and rhythmic tasks under OAF. Maximal disruption was found with a delay of 0.27 sec, a value rather greater than that typically found to be most disruptive in speech. Three of the 12 Ss showed speeded performance under part of the range of OAF intervals, as compared with performance under immediate feedback; however, their performance also reached a peak of slowing at a delay of about 0.27 sec. No significant differences were found between male and female Ss' performance. These findings were discussed without the context of control processes operating in music performance, and compared with the possibly analogous mechanisms of speech. Speech performance is often greatly affected by delayed auditory feedback (DAF) (Yates, 1963). Similar patterns of disruption have also been shown for single speech sounds, with resulting increase in intensity and length of each sound, as well as repetition of the single speech sound (

Subjects made timed manual responses in judging whether laterally presented four-letter words were identical to targets. In Experiment 1, nontargets differed by a single letter from targets. A right-field superiority occurred only for targets (which were detected fastest of all) and for nontargets where a letter changed at Position 2 or Position 3. Changes at initial and final positions were detected faster than the two middle positions, and there were no significant field differences. In Experiment 2, ascenders and descenders were controlled and changes were made in nontargets at all four letter positions, at Positions 1 and 4, at Positions 2 and 3, or at 2 alone. Response times for nontargets varied inversely with the number of differing letters, regardless of position. Significant field differences again only appeared for changes in the two middle positions. Letters at the beginning and end of a word seem to be processed faster than and differently from those within, where field differences are strongest. Vowel-consonant differences probably do not account for these effects, which are more compatible with some form of parallel, rather than either serial or holistic, processing.

In another article 2 the writers discussed the need of determining more exactly the nature of improvement which results from practice and presented the results of a study in which a motor function-speed of tapping-was utilized. The present study, conducted along lines similar in most respects, utilizes a mental function and thus approaches more closely the problem of the nature of changes in human nature brought about by education in the more typically intellectual functions.Concerning the character and limits of improvement which continued training may produce, there have been, traditionally, two main theories to which must now be added a third.