Today’s demonstration shows students how important smell is to the sense of taste.  In this activity, students learn that if they cannot use olfactory curs to identify flavors, their sense of taste is quite impoverished.  On the other hand, olfactory cues provide a rich experience they normally associate with taste.  This activity helped students to experience and understand the profound relationship between smell, taste, and flavour.

Results:  Typically, when your noses were plugged, you could not identify the flavor or the jelly beans unless they can see the jelly bean and guess the flavor from the color;nor can they distinguish different flavors until after they unplug their noses.  After this demonstration, it is easy to make the point that flavor results from more than just the tongue. Judgements of taste are influenced by smell and even by vision.

Tactile Simulation also plays a role in flavor- you can correctly identify cinnamon-flavored jelly beans

Finally, ones expectations also affect flavor.  The strong popcorn flavored jelly beans may be perceived as disgusting until and individual knows what to expect.

I hope you had fun while learning today!

Next class:  Perception and Illusions Lab

Note:  Make sure you have read this entire chapter! We will review next week prior to the Test on December 12.