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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    even as meats. Certain substances, on the other hand, for instance, the different sorts of bread, of white, graham, and rye flours, would be better discriminated by the anosmic subject. These results are easy of interpretation. What we know as tasting is a complex experience ‘made up’ of experiences of odor, of pressure, and of pain — not to speak of visual ele¬ ments — in varying combination with a limited number of distinct experiences of taste, (i) The consciousness of odor is the significant factor in 1 tasting ’ egg, fruit, wine, onion, chocolate, coffee, and tea. Tea and coffee are, indeed, un¬ distinguished from quinine, when the odor-elements are ex¬ cluded, and are differentiated from each other only by the slight astringency of the tea, that is, by the peculiar pres¬ sure-experience, the ‘puckering,’ which it incites. (2) The experience due to tasting nuts, vegetables, or grains forms a second class, for it consists, in large part, of pressure-sensa¬ tions excited by stimulation of the tongue. It follows that because of his trained attention to degrees of roughness, smoothness, hardness, and softness, the anosmic person can distinguish better than the normal person, if both are blind¬ folded, breads made of different grains. (3) The experi¬ ence of pungent taste, in the third place, is largely distin¬ guished by sensational elements of pain and perhaps of heat. (4) And finally, in another kind of tasting, the important feature is visual, as is proved by the fact that the varieties of meats and of bread are so frequently undistinguished by the blindfolded observer. But, though so-called tasting is thus proved to contain the sense-consciousness of smell, of pressure, and of color, it is characterized also by certain distinctive elemental taste-
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