We're talking about senses. The sense of sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch.
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Jackie: For this week's podcastsinenglish.com we're talking about senses. The sense of sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch.
Richard: Yes, because we recently watched a television programme about the senses, didn't we Jackie? The whole point of the programme was that you don't just use one sense at a time.
Jackie: Exactly.
Richard: They're linked together, aren't they?
Jackie: Yes, exactly. And um… one experiment that showed this was to do with your sense of taste and they had a number of people tasting different things. They were professional…
Richard: …chefs, I think.
Jackie: …chefs, yes. So people who do taste for their profession.
Richard: And they were tasting different coloured liquids, weren't they?
Jackie: Yes. They had in front of them glasses with red, yellow, orange and green liquids in them.
Richard: Yes. And they couldn't tell what was in the glasses, could they?
Jackie: Yes, because the flavour didn't go with the colour. So for example the strawberry-flavoured liquid, the strawberry-flavoured drink, wasn't red it was green and the mint -flavoured drink wasn't green it was yellow so it completely...
Richard: It fooled them, didn't it? They didn't know what they were drinking.
Jackie: So it was interesting because one of the… one of the tasters when they picked up the um… the orange drink and they tasted it, even though they could have a very strong taste of banana, for example, because it wasn't yellow the taste didn't work.
Richard: No. So that was very interesting.
Jackie: So the experiment shows that there’s more to taste than just your tongue. It's your eyes and your tongue.
Richard: Yes. And actually there was another interesting experiment as well. There was a video of a woman and when you looked at her you could hear she was saying “ma ma ma” but then when you had your eyes closed and listened to her she was actually saying “na na na”.
Jackie: Yes, because it was the wrong video with the sound.
Richard: Yes, so it was fooling you.
Jackie: So even though your ears were hearing the correct sound, your eyes which were looking at the wrong video…
Richard: Your eyes overruled your ears.
Jackie: Mmm
Richard: So I think that’s very, very important.
Jackie: So when you listen you don't just listen with your ears but you listen with your ears and your eyes.
Richard: Mmm
Jackie: So very important, Richard, for learners of English.
Richard: Definitely, definitely. It shows that it’s much easier to listen when you're looking at the person speaking to you. Not good for us, for podcasting, but er… good for learners of English.
Jackie: And Richard it shows that there’s always more to your senses than meets the eye.
Richard: [laughs] Very good!
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