An Empirical Comparison of Audition, Vision, and Touch in the Discrimination of Short Intervals of Time

The purpose of this research was to make an investigation of time discrimination in the three main sense modalities: vision, audition, and touch. Much research has been done in the field of audition, and some in vision and touch, but practically no work has been done toward a comparative study of the three sense modalities. Miss Gridley,1 using the Seashore phonograph record for the measurement of the "sense of time," instrumentally communicated to the O by the teletactor, compared hearing and touch and found that her Os made 5% higher scores in the auditory situation than in the tactual. Most research has followed the plan of varying the length of the intervals studied under constant conditions. In this research we have de-