Senses

Review of Frameworks for the Representation of alternative Conceptual Orderings as Determined by Linguistic and Cultural Contexts (Part #5)

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Media may be grouped by the degree to which they call upon the information processing capacity of the different senses. Such an approach is in sympathy with various schools of Eastern philosophy, where the senses are usually identified as: vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell, to which thinking is occasionally added. It has also been suggested that in certain cultures information processing associated with one particular sense tends to predominate. Very loosely it has been claimed that Western cultures are visually oriented in contrast to aurally oriented African cultures, for example (11). 

Even as a metaphor however, the difficulties of communicating information conveyed in aural terms to a person or group oriented to a visual presentation are immediately evident. They are dramatized by efforts to explain the visually perceived world to a blind person relying primarily on touch and sound. The blind person lacks referents for the visual experience; as in the case of colour. 

Whilst the coordination of sense experience is part of development in early childhood, an individual gradually comes to make greater use of some senses as opposed to others, depending on environmental circumstances. Thus the sense of smell is largely atrophied in urban environments. 

In societies the relationship between visual and aural information is complex. Written information may be viewed as suspect in comparison to word-of-mouth reports, or vice-versa. The translation from one form to another, 'writing it down' or 'presenting it verbally to an audience', can considerably modify the weight attached to the information, its ability to be received and the possiblities for its further dissemination.