Odor Memory Performance and Memory Awareness: A Comparison to Word Memory Across Orienting Tasks and Retention Intervals

Olsson, Mats Joakim Robert; Lundgren, Erika B.; Soares, Sandra C.; Johansson, Mikael

doi:10.1007/s12078-009-9051-7

Cited by 19 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 51 publications

(69 reference statements)

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“…It has been argued that olfactory cognition is set to overestimate stimulation for the purpose of serving as a warning system with safe and liberal decision criteria for detection [ 30 ]. In parallel, liberal decision criteria (i.e., high incidence of false alarms) for short-term recognition of common object odors have also been reported [ 31 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nosewitness Identification: Effects of Negative Emotion

et al. 2015

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Every individual has a unique body odor (BO), similar to a fingerprint. In forensic research, identification of culprit BOs has been performed by trained dogs, but not by humans. We introduce the concept of nosewitness identification and present the first experimental results on BO memory in witness situations involving violent crimes. Two experiments indicated that BO associated with male characters in authentic videos could later be identified in BO lineup tests well above chance. Moreover, culprit BO in emotional crime videos could be identified considerably better than the BO of a male person in neutral videos. This indicates that nosewitness identification benefits from emotional encoding. Altogether, the study testifies to the virtue of body odor as a cue to identify individuals observed under negative emotion.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nosewitness Identification: Effects of Negative Emotion

et al. 2015

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“…As noted, studies on odor memory revealed surprisingly little forgetting over time ( Lawless, 1978 ; Murphy et al, 1991 ; Saive et al, 2014 ). This seemed to be valid for longer RIs (days, weeks, and 1 year; Engen and Ross, 1973 ; Lawless and Cain, 1975 ; Olsson et al, 2009 ) as well as for shorter ones (seconds to minutes; Engen et al, 1973 ; Jones et al, 1975 ; Jehl et al, 1994 ). More recent studies have rebutted these results by showing substantial forgetting over time in line with e.g., memory for faces ( Cornell Kärnekull et al, 2015 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 79%

Nosewitness Identification: Effects of Lineup Size and Retention Interval

et al. 2016

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Although canine identification of body odor (BO) has been widely used as forensic evidence, the concept of nosewitness identification by human observers was only recently put to the test. The results indicated that BOs associated with male characters in authentic crime videos could later be identified in BO lineup tests well above chance. To further evaluate nosewitness memory, we assessed the effects of lineup size (Experiment 1) and retention interval (Experiment 2), using a forced-choice memory test. The results showed that nosewitness identification works for all lineup sizes (3, 5, and 8 BOs), but that larger lineups compromise identification performance in similarity to observations from eye- and earwitness studies. Also in line with previous eye- and earwitness studies, but in disagreement with some studies on odor memory, Experiment 2 showed significant forgetting between shorter retention intervals (15 min) and longer retention intervals (1-week) using lineups of five BOs. Altogether this study shows that identification of BO in a forensic setting is possible and has limits and characteristics in line with witness identification through other sensory modalities.

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“…Indeed, there is evidence that nameable and non-nameable odours may be represented differently in memory (e.g. Zelano, Montag, Khan, & Sobel, 2009), with verbal recoding shown to produce memory effects similar to that shown with words (Olsson, Lundgren, Soares, & Johansson, 2009). To be clear, since verbalisable odours may exhibit PI effects resulting from verbal rather than olfactory perceptions, Experiment 1 employs hard-to-name odours.…”

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confidence: 99%

Item-specific proactive interference in olfactory working memory

Moss

Miles

Elsley

et al. 2017

Memory

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We examine item-specific olfactory proactive interference (PI) effects and undertake comparisons with verbal and non-verbal visual stimuli. Using a sequential recent-probes task, we show no evidence for PI with hard-to-name odours (Experiment 1). However, verbalisable odours do exhibit PI effects (Experiment 2). These findings occur despite above chance performance and similar serial position functions across both tasks. Experiments 3 and 4 apply words and faces, respectively, to our modified procedure, and show that methodological differences cannot explain the null finding in Experiment 1. The extent to which odours exhibit analogous PI effects to that of other modalities is, we argue, contingent on the characteristics of the odours employed.

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Odor Memory Performance and Memory Awareness: A Comparison to Word Memory Across Orienting Tasks and Retention Intervals

Cited by 19 publications

References 51 publications

Nosewitness Identification: Effects of Negative Emotion

Nosewitness Identification: Effects of Negative Emotion

Nosewitness Identification: Effects of Lineup Size and Retention Interval

Item-specific proactive interference in olfactory working memory

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