The investigation was an assessment of the fundamental principles, primarily the Principle of Integrality, as specified within Martha Rogers' Science of Unitary Human Beings. The researcher predicted that the subjects would prefer environmental field patterns which were similar in diversity to their human field patterns. Temporal experience, one manifestation of the human field, was studied in relation to music, one manifestation of the environmental field. The researcher questioned to what extent a subject's preference for musical sequence complexity, measured in terms of perceived pleasingness and perceived interestingness, would be related to perceived temporal experience (time dragging, time racing, timelessness). Additional analyses were conducted to assess whether, while holding mood constant, there was a significant difference between the subject's musical sequence preferences.

The sample consisted of ninety female volunteers aged twenty to fifty who met specified delimitations. Tapes, consisting of fifteen 20-second musical sequences of pre-recorded music that varied in musical complexity (five of low complexity, five of moderate complexity, five of high complexity), were played for the subjects. While the subjects listened to the tapes, they measured their preference for musical sequence complexity on a series of visual analog scales: Pleasingness, Interestingness and Complexity. The Temporal Experience Scales (Paletta, 1988) were used to measure temporal experience. The Mood Checklist (Mansour, 1984) provided the data for the mood variable.

The data were analyzed using the SPSS-X Data Analysis System, Release 3.0 (SPSS-X, 1988). Prior to hypothesis testing, the data were assessed under univariate and bivariate conditions. Repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance was chosen as the hypothesis testing statistic. Statistically significant results led to the conclusion that the subjects' preferences for musical sequence complexity measured in terms of perceived pleasingness were related to perceived temporal experience, however the subjects' preferences for musical sequence complexity measured in terms of perceived interestingness were not related to perceived temporal experience. Supplementary analyses were also conducted.