Week 4: EMT & Metacommunication

The idea of the "extended mind thesis" has stuck with me the most this past week. Not only because of its imperative concept that connects the tangible with the theoretical and developing, but also because of its direct link to the notions of memory and internalised recall.

I work in a Perfumery. A small one I'll admit by commercial standards, but frankly I don't think of over 750 different fragrances as 'small'.
One the days where sales are a bit slow, we like to play a little game of 'scent recall' between fellow collugues. The object is for one person to select the three most different or hard to recognise fragrances they can think of, and for the second person to attempt to guess which fragrances they are, only by getting a sprayed sample on a tester card. The guessing person may have hints they wish, but ultimately they have a time limit to work out what fume they are sampling.

This game, though playful and only for fun, actually holds a lot of value between the ideals of EMT with the challenges of memory recall. According to the Weizman institute, your sense of smell is closest linked to your memory above all other senses, however, in a form different to the other four.

Let's take a contrasting look at this game in depth. I'm up first. The intangible scent of peony and tonka beans strike me first. I can immediately recall them. I picture them in my mind written down in in the fragrance encyclopaedia kept at work, and i visualise the list of matching perfumes. Completely internalised. completely recalling based on memorised experience. I search through the shelves looking at each bottle for a visual cue to set off the connection. Finally i come across a small square bottle with a diamond lid and the notes click. "It's this one!" i claim in excitement. And to my success i select correctly.

My opponent takes the floor. i hand her my selected fragrance. She smells and then immediately begins to write down her thoughts. She scribbles down each note in a hurried manner before coming over to me and asking "are these right". I look to her notes and find a list of ingredients she claims to have experienced in the scent. I cross off the ones that aren't there and leave the correct ones. She now continues to externalise the problem. now writing down a list of all possible fragrances. Again she comes to me and asks the same question. Without completely answering i say 'yes, the correct one is on there'. Finally, after much writing and logical elimination she selects the correct fragrance.

We both win!!

But more importantly, we both achieved our goals through divergent ideals of the EMT. She externalised the situation and used notes and submissions to solve the problem, whilst i, at first, internalise the response and used memory to solve the problem, then  proceeded to externalise using visual cues.