Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Applications designed to power human senses
and improve emotional wellbeing of the user take
now a form of small gadgets such as a bracelet (that
may soon contain a smart phone) or a waterproof
wristband synced to a smart phone, which tracks
sleep patterns (deep versus light sleep, awake time,
and overall sleep quality), has a silent vibrating
alarm, a motion sensor (that counts your steps
on a track), and a food journal (that encourages
to snap a photo of the food and report how each
meal makes you feel, and then uses responses
over time to discover which meals make you feel
best). Marshall, Chamberlain, and Benford (2011)
designed a wearable audio artwork titled “I Seek
the Nerves under Your Skin,“ which encourages
people to run increasingly fast, pushing themselves
physically and mentally, to mirror the intensifying
performance of a poet heard on the headphones. If
the listener goes faster, the poem runs for longer
before fading. To hear the whole poem the lis-
tener must accelerate to a sprint (between 10 and
20 miles per hour) in 90 seconds, so only some
listeners will hear the complete poem.
or defining landmarks for territory boundaries. In
case of pheromones the threshold level is usually
so low that single molecules can evoke reaction.
Also plants release pheromones to attract bees and
other pollinators to their flowers. In case of human
reactions, individual people differ very much in
their sensitivity to smells (and to other kinds of
stimuli). In most cases those living in big cities
may desire to have a quality of smell displayed
by people living in pristine conditions, such as
members of tribes living in the Sahara Desert or
the Aboriginal people living in Western Australia.
On the other hand, we can inspect the notion of
perceptual sensitivity by looking for sources of the
experience. From this angle, the quality of being
sensitive may mean an ability to recognize and
remember a stimulus and a signal it denotes without
an external reference for making a comparison.
This appears to be a case with people possessing
perfect pitch and a perfect sense of color. As for
the matters of smell and taste, people can tell the
difference between 4,000-10,000 smells, and they
have close to 10,000 taste buds in their mouths.
One may say, some people, for example wine,
beer, or tea testers have attained connoisseurship,
as they can discriminate minute differences in the
smell and taste of a substance. In a similar way,
a connoisseur in the fine arts, for whom a small
difference makes a great difference, is a person not
only having a great deal of knowledge but also a
quality of being sensitive to minute, incomparable
variations in what they see or experience, giving
them an insight.
There are also a great number of people having
sensual abilities more acute than those of others
- both in terms of the threshold and the source of
sensory information. With the existing scientific
methods, we cannot verify and appreciate their
talents and successes because of lack of tools and
methods of assessment. Whether one accepts it
as true or not, some individuals claim they are
sensitive enough (and equipped with an appropri-
ate energy) to be able to diagnose others' illness,
give one at least temporary relief of pain, find a
SENSITIVITY
Questions about the Threshold and
the Source of Sensory Information
It seems we can look at the notion of perceptual
sensitivity in two different ways. First, we can think
of sensitivity from an angle of a threshold inten-
sity of a stimulus that must be exceeded to evoke
a reaction. In this respect, sensitivity to specific
kinds of stimuli such as visuals, sounds, or smells
varies greatly, both between species and among
individual people. Not only most of animals have
a lower threshold level to respond to a smell, but
also they produce and release chemical substances
called pheromones that cause physiological and
behavioral reactions in others of their species or in
different living beings, such as causing aggrega-
tion, alarming, attracting a mate, marking trails,
