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Sensory Interaction
ENGAGE 1.6-16
(10 minutes) Introduce sensory
interaction to your students with this
activity. Have students bring in pieces
of apple and potato, along with non-
carbonated soda and a sports drink.
Using a blind taste test, have students
plug their noses so that no air can get
into the nose and taste the different
samples. They should not be able to
tell the difference in taste between the
foods or drinks if smell is impaired.
Be cautious of food allergies with this
activity.
TEACH 1.6-16
Teaching Tip
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Point out to students that vision and
taste can interact. Have students
imagine how appetizing blue macaroni
and cheese might taste. Or perhaps
have them consider the tastiness of
green mashed potatoes. Students
may also expect that a red-colored
drink may have a strawberry flavor
and be startled if the taste is grape.
ENGAGE 1.6-16 Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Not for redistribution.
(10 minutes) Demonstrate to students
that the color of our food influences
our perception of its taste. Use
Teacher Demonstration: Vision and
Taste to show this phenomenon using
gelatin.
M1.6d: Vision and Taste
154
03_myersAPpsychology4e_28116_ch01_002_163.indd
154 Unit 1 Biological Bases of Behavior
03_HammerTE4e_47547_ch01_2a_163_4pp.indd 154
1.6-16 How does sensory interaction influence our perceptions, and what is
y interaction
y interaction
1.6-16
ceptions, and what is
influence our per
How does
sensor
sensor
How does
How does
embodied cognition?
embodied cognition?
We have seen that vision and kinesthesis interact. Actually, none of our senses acts alone.
All of them — seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching — eavesdrop on one another, and
our brain blends their inputs to interpret the world ( Rosenblum, 2013 ). This is sensory
interaction at work. One sense can influence another.
Consider how smell sticks its nose into the business of taste. Hold your nose, close your
eyes, and have someone feed you various foods. A slice of apple may be indistinguishable
from a chunk of raw potato. A cracker may taste like cardboard. Without their smells, a cup
of cold coffee may be hard to distinguish from a glass of Gatorade. A big part of taste is right
under your nose.
Contrary to Aristotle’s presumption that taste sensors were found only on the tongue,
you also inhale the aroma through your nose — a scientific fact not understood until 1812
( Bartoshuk et al., 2019 ). Like smoke rising in a chimney, food molecules released by chewing
rise into your nasal cavity. This is why food tastes bland when you have a bad cold. Smell
can also change our perception of taste: A drink’s strawberry odor enhances our perception
of its sweetness. Even touch can influence taste. Depending on its texture, a potato chip
“tastes” fresh or stale ( Smith, 2011 ). Smell + texture + taste = flavor. Yet perhaps you have
noticed: Flavor feels located in the mouth ( Stevenson, 2014 ).
Vision and hearing may similarly interact. Baseball umpires’ vision informs their hear-
ing of when the ball hits a player’s glove, influencing their judgments of whether baserun-
ners are safe or out ( Krynen & McBeath, 2019 ). Likewise, a weak flicker of light becomes
more visible when accompanied by a short burst of sound ( Kayser, 2007 ). The reverse is also
true: Soft sounds are more easily heard when paired with a visual cue. If I [DM], as a person
with hearing loss, watch a video with on-screen captions, I have no trouble hearing the
sensory interaction the words I am seeing. But if I then decide I don’t need the captions and turn them off, I quickly
realize I do need them. The eyes guide the ears ( Figure 1.6-26 ).
principle that one sense can So, our senses interact. But what happens if they disagree? What if our eyes see a speaker
influence another, as when the
smell of food influences its taste. form one sound but our ears hear another sound? Surprise: Our brain may perceive a third
sound that blends both inputs. Seeing mouth movements for ga while hearing ba, we may
perceive da. This phenomenon is known as the McGurk effect, after Scottish psychologist
Harry McGurk, who, with his assistant John MacDonald, discovered the effect ( McGurk
& MacDonald, 1976 ).
For most of us, lip
Figure 1.6-26 reading is part of hear-
Sensory interaction ing, which is why mask
Seeing the speaker forming the wearing during the
words in video chats makes those Covid pandemic has
words easier to understand for
made communication
hard-of-hearing people ( Knight,
2004 ). more challenging.
We have seen that
our perceptions have
two main ingredients:
our bottom-up sensa-
tions and our top-
© Albrecht Weisser/Westend61/Corbis down cognitions (such
as expectations, atti-
tudes, thoughts, and
memories). In everyday
Unit 1 Biological Bases of Behavior
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