Abstract
This study attempted to analyze discomforts in relation to sensory modality and subject's gender. Twenty students were asked to give free description of the experiences they imagined with twenty-seven sentences depicting the situations of a distinct stimulation of four sensory modalities except for gustation. They were also required to rate on the five-point scale their judgments of easiness for reproducing the corresponding situation, easiness for arousing discomfort, and intensity of the discomfort, respectively.Discomforts were divided into and affect: The former is the affect induced directly by sensory event, as exampled byI fear darkness itself to a stimulus sentence Make a night journey alone, whilst the latter is the affect aroused through cognitive processing, as exampled byI get a fright by thinking I may be assaulted. Also, discomforts judged as indicating the potentiality for coping behaviour were checked to count their frequency. These judgments were made by experimenters.The results obtained were as follows: 1) There found no significant difference among modalities and genders, in easiness for recollecting the situation and easiness for arousing the discomfort. 2 ) In all of the four modalities, sensation-based affect was aroused more frequently than cognition-based one. More closely, sensation-based affect was significantly dominant in tactual and olfactory modalities, whilst frequency of cognition-based one was relatively high in both visual and auditory modalities. Females gave larger number of reports on cognition-based affect than males did. 3) Intensity of sensation-based affect showed main effects of two variables and their interaction, whilst that of cognition-based affect showed the modality effect alone. Intensity of sensation-based affect was higher in audition and olfactions, while that of cognition-based affect was the highest in vision. 4) Potentiality for coping behaviour was higher for sensation-based affect than for cognition-based one. Intensity was higher for the discomfort showing the potentiality than for the discomfort showing no sign of it.
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