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KANSAS UNIVERSITY SCIENCE BULLETIN. 



takes his music lesson. The instrument is tuned to interna- 

 tional pitch and is lower than his own. He said it sounded 

 flat. The results are in table II. 



With the first of the errors it occurred to the experimenters 

 that the judgments were being determined exclusively by 

 simple comparison with the image-standards from the home 

 piano — an hypothesis which would have involved uniformity 

 in the errors. Notes a half tone lower in pitch than those 

 really given should have been named. 



Later it occurred to us that the observer himself might be 

 trying to correct the difference between the two pianos. That 

 this was usually the case became known from answers to ques- 

 tions asked after the test. The observer arrived at most of his 

 judgments by traveling the following mental highway: The 

 tone was first identified and named by means of the images 

 from his own piano — the instrument on which he daily played 

 and with which his familiarity was great. Having thus iden- 

 tified the tone as nearly as possible (exact correspondence in 

 any instance would be highly improbable) , the simple addition 

 of a half tone brought about the judgment announced. 



In a few cases direct recall of the tone-images from the teach- 

 er's piano rendered any additional mental labor unnecessary 

 to identification. 



