A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins.

  • Mary Whiton Calkins
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    its ultimate elements. The method has now to be applied to the experiences which we know as tastes. The ordinary individual, asked to name what he had Tasted’ at dinner, might answer that he had tasted beef- bouillon, roast duck, potato, onion, dressed celery, peach ice, and coffee. But the psychologist would conclude at once that some of these experience^ were complex, made up of simpler elements. And the experimentalist would go farther: he would take means to isolate, so far as he could, the conditions of taste, so that other sense-elements should be shut out from consciousness. To this end he would select, if possible, as subject of the experiments, an anosmic person, that is, one without smell-sensations, or else he would close the sub¬ ject’s nostrils, so as to eliminate most of these smell-sensa¬ tions; and he would certainly blindfold the subject, to pre¬ vent his seeing the articles which he tasted. These substances would be presented to him at an even temperature, and the solids would be finely minced so as to be indistinguishable in form. Judging by the results of actual experiments, in par¬ ticular those of Professor G. T. W. Patrick, the results of such a test, as applied to our suggested menu, would be the following: the blindfolded and anosmic subject would as likely as not suppose that he had tasted chicken broth, beef, potato, an unknown sweetish substance, another unknown material mixed with a thick, tasteless oil, a sweet unflavored substance and a slightly bitter liquid — perhaps a dilute solution of quinine. A normal person, also blindfolded, but without closed nostrils, would recognize the onion, the peach, the coffee, and often the olive oil; but would be likely to confuse the beef and the duck; whereas, if these were un¬ salted, the anosmic subject would fail to recognize them
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