The Present Status of Research in the Psychology of Music at the University of Iowa. By Carl E. Seashore. Pp.  29.  University of Iowa. Studies published by the University. 1929.

This pamphlet gives the account of an inventory of the course of development, the results accomplished and the future program in the laboratory for the psychology of music. The researches in progress at the present time, carried on by a group of students and members of the staff, fall into seven distinct fields, “(1) the measurement of musical talent; (2) the development of educational guidance, both vocational and avocational; (3) the laying of scientific foundations for the aesthetics of music; (4) the collecting and the interpreting of primitive music; (5) the setting and analyzing of norms for artistic singing and playing, (6) the application of psychology to the improvement of the teaching of music; and (7) the organization of material for a psychology of music, pure and applied.”

Basic measurements have been made of the sense of pitch, the sense of time, the sense of intensity, the sense of rhythm, the sense of consonance and tonal memory, and are made available on Columbia phonograph records in a standardized and permanent way. In recent years these have been used for surveys of talent in public schools for the selection of material for instrumental and vocal organizations in public schools, as a basis of selection for admission to schools of music, for comparative anthropological measurements on racial traits in music, for determination of inheritance and development of musical talent, for earmindedness, etc.

The laboratory has a large equipment of fundamental measuring instruments which are not only useful in evaluating musical performances, but also in aiding educational guidance, in analyzing the aesthetics of music, and in collecting and interpreting primitive music. They have made fundamental contributions in this latter field through the adaptation of phonophotography for field work. “The photogram is not only objective and permanent, but it magnifies and reveals to the eye in exact detail a large number of those subtle factors which affect our hearing o