An experimental study of the second-signaling systems of man through the printed language

The author has published previously in this journal his findings that not only the sight of a “pickled plum” increased the resting saliva of Japanese adults, but the spoken words “pickled plum” also increased the amount of saliva as a natural conditional reflex. It was also found that the reflex was stronger when an oral interpretation of the words “pickled plum” was added to their mere phonation. The author deduced that language is a conditional stimulus, the concept of which is released by unconditional stimulation. In this paper the author experimentally shows that reading printed language as well as writing it has the same effect in the human.