Texts: These questions tap into our discussion in lecture about Flavor. If you recall, Flavor is different from taste or smell. It is made up of our senses of taste and smell, and also touch (texture), pain, temperature, and our senses from the trigeminal nerve. We didn't talk so much about vision. What we see of our food influences the flavor of that food (or our feelings of disgust), as you could see in these videos. This is related to a concept we talked about earlier, cognitive penetration versus cognitive impenetrability. Recall that cognitive penetration proposes that our perceptions change as a result of our emotions or cognitions. The opposing position is cognitive impenetrability, or that our perceptions stay the same, but what changes is our attention, expectation, or our mood state. This research is still being conducted so there are many people on both sides of this thought.
Video 1:
Video 2:
Which of these processes (cognitive penetration or cognitive impenetrability) do you think is going on in these videos?
2. Defend your answer to question #1. Use some examples from the videos or, even better, use some examples from your own life where your perception of food was influenced by external factors.
3. Have you ever had a strong reaction to the sight or smell of food? For example, Is there a favorite dish that someone in your family makes that you love the smell of and it brings back memories. Or maybe there is a food that made you ill once from eating it and you get nauseous every time you see or smell that food. Describe that reaction.
4. I've just made you think about the emotional connection to food which is different from the cognitive connection shown in the videos. Thinking about this emotional connection, how does that change your thoughts about what you said in questions #1 & #2? Defend your answer using examples either from your own life or from the videos.