A Metamemory Perspective on Odor Naming and Identification

Abstract

A metacognitive perspective is utilized to elucidate why it is so difficult to name common odors and what characterizes the subjective knowledge people have about their actual odor knowledge. Odor-naming failures are often accompanied by strong feelings of knowing (FOK) or feelings of imminent retrieval of what it is that smells. The paper's two experiments investigate FOK judgements and tip of the tongue (TOT) experiences for odor and person names. The data indicate that our inability to correctly name odors are typically not due to the often proposed uniquely poor association between odors and their proper names, but rather due to failures to identify the odors, that is, failures to know 'what it is'. It was also found that (i) TOT experiences are very unusual for odor names and more so than for person names; (ii) FOK judgements about odor names are significantly less predictive of later retrieval than equivalent judgements about names of persons; (iii) FOK judgements were highly correlated with the familiarity of the cue (odor or picture of famous person), rendering some support for the idea that FOK judgements are based on the perceived familiarity of the cue triggering the FOK; and (iv) the idea that FOK judgements are based on the amount of available information about the sought-for memory (accessibility theory) was also supported.

Odor recognition without identification

“…It is also consistent with the idea that odors are weakly connected to all information relevant to specifying the source of the odor, and not just to their names (Jönsson et al, 2005). In either case, it follows that even partial information about an odor name would be difficult to access in response to an odor.…”

“…memory: It may be driven by sensory aspects of the smell itself rather than by the activation of the name in response to the smell. In support of this latter possibility, Jönsson et al (2005) reported that feelings-of-knowing (FOKs) for odors were correlated with the familiarity of the odors themselves.…”

“…However, if the link between odors and their names is indeed weaker than that between other types of referents and their names in memory, it is also possible that this link is not involved in odor RWI. Instead, such odor recognition may be a form of perceptually driven other types of information (Lawless & Engen, 1977) and that TOT states are rarer for odor names than for people's names (Jönsson et al, 2005). Previous research with the RWI paradigm has shown that participants attribute the presence of a TOT state to the likelihood that an inaccessible name was studied (Cleary, 2006;Cleary & Reyes, 2009;Cleary & Specker, 2007).…”

“…Although there is a general consensus on this latter point (e.g., Herz & Engen, 1996), there is not a general consensus as to why. Some have suggested that weak connections between odors and their names in semantic memory are to blame (e.g., Stevenson & Case, 2005;Stevenson et al, 2007); others have suggested that lack of access to the source of the odor itself (rather than a mere lack of access to its name) may be the problem (Jönsson, Tchekhova, Lönner, & Olsson, 2005). Stevenson et al (2007) reported evidence that odor names (e.g., the name strawberry) and their odor referents (e.g., the smell of strawberry) are more weakly linked in semantic memory than the same names and their visual referents (e.g., an image of a strawberry).…”

Difficulty in evoking odor images: The role of odor naming

“…The first is that odors may often be misperceived, resulting in retrieval of the correct name for the misperception, but the wrong name as far as the experimenter is concerned (e.g., Cain & Potts, 1996;Jonsson, Tchekhova, Lonner, & Olsson, 2005). Second, it may not always be possible to activate the verbal label for the odor, even though its general class (e.g., fruity), its familiarity, and its hedonic aspects may be appreciated.…”