Learning Odors: The Impact of Visual and Olfactory Mental Imagery Training on Odor Perception

Abstract

Mental imagery has been used successfully in sensorimotor training, but rarely to improve sensory skills. Novices, undergraduate enology students (intermediates) and wine experts were asked to repeatedly imagine the visual images or smells of odorant sources presented in picture form. Olfactory abilities, odor sensitivity and identification performance were compared before and after mental training to check the differential effects of the two types of sensory training. We demonstrated that, like repeated objective odorant stimulations, repeated imagination of odors was able to enhance olfactory performance in objective perception. Both odor detection and identification abilities were improved. However, according to our results: (1) the effect was odorant specific; and (2) the impact of training on identification was restricted to wine experts. In addition, interestingly, the experts' olfactory identification performance apparently deteriorated following specific visual attention during the training phase. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONSOne extremely important aspect of sensory evaluation is training panelists to achieve consistent results. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of olfactory mental imagery as training strategy. The findings demonstrated that olfactory mental imagery was able to modify olfactory capabilities of wine professionals, with results comparable to those obtained using perceptual training. Consequently, olfactory mental imagery is an excellent tool for training the olfactory capacities of panelists, and may be extended to perfumers, flavorists and tasting panelists with a view to improving product quality control, without material stimulus such as chemical supports.

What Makes a Better Smeller?

“…When asked to just sniff either diacetyl or linalool every day for 1 month, experts were better able to detect the trained odor (Tempere, Cuzange, Bougeant, Revel, & Sicard, 2012). In fact, just imagining odors appears sufficient to improve detection for the imagined smell (Tempere, Hamtat, Bougeant, de Revel, & Sicard, 2014).…”

“…At present, however, it is unclear how such training compares with the mere exposure paradigm, and to what extent the improvements in discrimination generalize to new odors. To our knowledge, no study has utilized a more active training strategy to improve odor sensitivity, except Tempere, Hamtat, et al (2014) who found mental imagery training for specific odors improved odor detection. It is possible that such active training could benefit odor discrimination performance more (as compared with mere exposure training) because discrimination is a higher level process than odor detection.…”

Sensory expert assessor's learning practices at workplace: Competencies and contexts in sensory evaluation

“…The expert's workplace has been identified as a key factor contributing to the continuous development of expertise (Tynjälä, ), and thus, the development of a workplace as a learning environment has been emphasized. Previous literature on sensory training has emphasized an individual's work in light of assessor training methods, for example, mental imagery (Tempere, Hamtat, Bougeant, Revel, & Sicard, ) and computerized panel training (Kuesten, McLellan, & Altman, ). Collaborative interaction as a training method has been mentioned in a study by Marchisano, Vallis, and Macfie () in which the results showed that there was no evidence that the feedback had positive effects on performance in triangle tests or scaling.…”

Sensory Profile of Portuguese White Wines Using Long‐Term Memory: A Novel Nationwide Approach

“…Clear agreement between experts concerning typicality scores (Ballester et al 2008) and existence of shared cognitive constructs of typicality (Urdapilleta et al 2011) have been demonstrated. Descriptions stored in longterm memory can be used to generate images of objects and scenes (Tempere et al 2014). Flavor may be processed by tasters as a psychological construct, the data being more consistent with a perceptual/cognitive process rather than a consequence of rating strategies (Prescott 1999).…”