A Game of the Senses
Trends in Responses Collected from 225 Participants
It is close to a year now since my last Medium article, a very very late Happy New Year to all my readers! This article was originally conceptualized along with my last writeup, The Peculiarities of Human Behavior, and thus uses data collected from the same sample.
Early last year I read neuroscientist David J. Linden’s book Touch: The Science of the Sense That Makes Us Human. From discussing the skin as a social organ to illusion and transcendence, the book is a very interesting and rich account on the nature of the sense of touch. What particularly stirred my curiosity, however, was a young David and friends playing a game that required the player to give up all their senses, except one. He recounts that neither he nor his friends chose to preserve the sense of touch.
The survival of organisms in the biosphere largely depends on their ability to detect stimuli from their immediate environment and execute a fitting response. It thus goes without saying that our five senses have been selected through our evolutionary history due to the advantage they conferred upon our ancestors. Interestingly, Sheldon Cooper and Howard Wolowitz, in Episode 21 of Season 8 of The Big Bang Theory, argue that the sense of touch is the most basic sense and would be the most appropriate way to send interstellar messages to alien civilizations. At the very least, even a simple organism like an amoeba responds to touch stimulus. Depending on one’s knowledge on the significance of each sense to our survival, however, it may be quite tempting to consider some senses superior to others. Would the unpopularity of the sense of touch among David and his friends be a product of them not readily recognizing its utility?
I decided to test David’s childhood experience by replicating the game with 240 participants between the ages of 7 and 18. I asked each participant to independently write which one of the five senses they would give up if asked to. 15 responses were ambiguous and were excluded from the data analysis, bringing the number of responses to 225. In an unexpected turn of events, the sense of smell, standing at a 41.3%, was the most common choice, and the sense of touch, at 36.8%, coming in a close second. As expected, the sense of sight, at 3.1%, was the least common choice.
It is very plausible that the age of the participants may have played a significant role in influencing their choice. I grouped the participants based on Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development; ages 7–11 and ages 12–18. Would there be any notable differences in the trends of the data?
Of the 225 viable responses, 119 (52.8%) were from participants between 7 and 11 years of age, and 106 (47.1%) were from participants between 12 and 18 years of age.
Fascinatingly, the trend of the data for the 7–11 age group was very similar to the overall trend. The sense of smell was the most common choice, amassing a 43.7%. In close second, yet again, was the sense of touch at 39.5%. With a 2.5%, the sense of sight was the least common choice.
41.5% of the participants in the 12–18 age group opted for the sense of smell, 34% opted for the sense of touch and 3.8% opted for the sense of sight.
In both age groups, the sense of smell was the most common, followed by the sense of touch, and the sense of sight was the least common. There was, however, a significant difference in the sense of sound and the sense of taste. 10.9% of the participants in the 7–11 age group chose sound, as opposed to the 6.6% in the 12–18 age group. The opposite was observed in the sense of taste, where only 3.4% of the 7–11 age group chose taste and 14.1% of the 12–18 age group chose taste. Could there be a plausible reason for such contrast? Perhaps, but I am not inclined to making any speculations.
The big question is why the sense of smell, albeit narrowly, was the most common sense of choice. What was going on in the minds of these participants? Is it possible that the choice was influenced by the thought of pungent odors? Perhaps. The amusing thing about this choice is the probable lack of awareness of the connection between the sense of smell and the sense of taste. What trends do you think you would obtain? Share your results!
NB: I do not mean any offense to individuals living with sensory disabilities.
