The use of tempo and rhythm in the diagnosing of manic and schizophrenic Afro-American males

Abstract: The purpose of the study was to determine whether differences exist in Afro-American adult males diagnosed as manic, schizophrenic, and normal with regards to the perception and performances of tempo and rhythm. The working hypothesis was that Afro-American subject diagnosed as manic would exhibit significant differences in the scores of diagnosed as schizophrenic. However, the hypothesis was changed due to the low number of subjects. Consequently, the final hypothesis was that there would be a difference in the perception and performance between normal subjects and psychiatric subjects (diagnosis as manic and schizophrenic) in rhythm and tempo. Subjects were chosen based on the following criteria: race (Afro-American), gender (males), age (20-40), and diagnosis (mania or schizophrenia). The psychiatric subjects were patients from an urban university hospital and an area veterans administration hospital. The normal subjects consisted of staff from one of the facilities and persons from the community. There was a total of eleven normal subjects and seven psychiatric subjects tested for the research. The thesis incorporated the post-facto and causal-comparative case study designs. Four tasks were used to test the subjects. Three of the tasks ("pulse maintenance", "rhythm imitation", and "patterning") were exact replications of Janice Cohen's (1986) work. The fourth task was created by the examiner. Cohen's tasks required the subjects to hit a drum and were recorded using a tape recorder. The examiner's task responses were given verbally and recorded on a task answer sheet. The "pulse maintenance", "rhythm imitation", and "patterning" tasks were analyzed using the Mann Whitney U non-parametric test. The "tempo perception" task was calculated with a 3 x 2 chi square. The results indicated that there was no significant difference between the scores of the psychiatric and normal subjects in the perception and performance of tempo as indicated in any of the tasks. There was, however, a significant difference between the psychaitric and normal subjects with regards to rhythm in the "pulse maintenance" and "rhythm imitation" tasks (p < .01) but not in the "patterning" task. Although the analyzed data showed no difference of rhythm in the "patterning" task and tempo perception in the "tempo perception" task, the mean scores indicated the possibility of significance in those areas. The comparison between the three subjects revealed that the scores between the manic subject and the normal subject were the most similar with regards to tempo in the "pulse maintenance" task and rhythm in the "rhythm imitation" task. Because the results differ than those of literature in the area of rhythm and tempo, more research needs to be conducted in this area.

Note: Afro-American

Keyword(s): Diagnosing, tempo, rhtyhm, schizopgenic, manic.

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