Memory for odors and odor names: Modalities of elaboration and imagery.

Abstract

This study examined memory for common odors and odor names that were encoded with visual, verbal, and olfactory elaborations. In the first experiment, subjects elaborated olfactory stimuli by processing a picture of the odor's source, a name for the odor, or both. Two control groups were also included: One group was presented only with the odors, and another group was presented only with odor names. One week later, all subjects were given both a free recall test of odor names and an olfactory recognition test. In general, the elaboration groups outperformed the control groups, with the visual and verbal elaboration group demonstrating the best performance. In a second experiment, olfactory imaginal encoding of odor names was compared with visual imaginal encoding of the same names to measure the relative efficacy of same versus different modality encoding on later stimulus recognition. The results showed that olfactory imaginal encoding aided later recognition of odors, and visual imaginal encoding aided later picture recognition. It is suggested that different modalities contribute unique and mnemonically independent information to episodic memory performance.Experiment 2 was performed as part of Brian J. Lyman's doctoral dissertation under the guidance of Marie A. McDaniel.We would like to thank Bill Cain, Colin MacLeod, Roddy Roediger, and Janice Keenan for insightful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Implicit and explicit memory for odors: Hemispheric differences

“…In line with the present study, Cronin-Golomb, Gabrieli, and Keane (1996) failed to show any difference between ipsi-and contralateral testing for visual word-stem completion priming. Lyman and McDaniel (1990) made a strong case for dual perceptual and semantic encoding in memory for odors. Semantic encoding of odors, assessed by the quality of names assigned to stimuli, accounts for a considerable amount of variance in performance in recognition memory (Larsson, 1997;Murphy, Cain, Gilmore, & Skinner, 1991;Rabin & Cain, 1984).…”

Difficulty in evoking odor images: The role of odor naming

“…The advantage of this method is that it allows us to ask directly about the most salient aspect of imagery-its phenomenal quality. Needless to say, such reports may suffer from various biases (see Richardson, 1999); however, several authors have reported positive correlations between such self-reports and measures of olfactory imagery not reliant on this form of measure (e.g., Bensafi et al, 2005;Djordjevic, Zatorre, Petrides, & Jones-Gotman, 2004;Lyman & McDaniels, 1990). More generally, in the visual imagery literature, where this relationship has been studied extensively, a modest but appreciable correlation (r .27) has been obtained between these variables, across studies (McKelvie, 1995).…”

Impaired odor recognition memory in patients with hippocampal lesions

“…Second, in earlier studies, access to verbal labels at the time of study did not affect subsequent odor recognition performance (Engen and Ross 1973;AyabeKanamura et al 1997). Although verbal elaboration about odors at the time of study can sometimes facilitate subsequent recognition (Lyman and McDaniel 1990), it is thought that odors are typically perceived as unitary items without a strong verbal link. That is, the association between odors and their verbal labels is ordinarily rather weak (Engen 1987;Lyman and McDaniel 1990).…”

“…Although verbal elaboration about odors at the time of study can sometimes facilitate subsequent recognition (Lyman and McDaniel 1990), it is thought that odors are typically perceived as unitary items without a strong verbal link. That is, the association between odors and their verbal labels is ordinarily rather weak (Engen 1987;Lyman and McDaniel 1990). Third, in an earlier study involving the same odors (Levy et al 2003), the olfactory memory span attained by controls (7.9) was about the same as the memory span for difficult-to-verbalize designs (8.6) and much less than the memory span for line drawings of nameable objects (21.1).…”