Abstract

Introduction

It is well known that it is difficult to label odors in the absence of contextual cues. Relatively less is known about the time course of naming odors and the consistency with which people can do such a task.  The current “pilot” study measures people’s ability to name common and uncommon odors, as well as the speed and consistency of their responses.  Performance on the olfactory task is compared to a similar visual task.

Method

Twenty-four college students (12 male) produced verbal labels for 50 images and 50 odors.   Half of the odors (e.g. coffee) and pictures (e.g. dolphin) were common and half were uncommon (e.g. Diethyl malonate and amorphous shapes).  Two-thirds of the stimuli were shown twice.

Results

Preliminary analyses indicate that participants provided fewer labels for odors (<40%) than for pictures (100%).   Common pictures were also labeled with perfect consistency and very quickly (~1000 msec), but uncommon pictures and common and uncommon odors were not consistent (~50%, <40% and <20%, respectively) and were relatively slow (3000-6000 msec).  Accuracy of labels was perfect for pictures but <40% correct for odors.  

Discussion

The results confirm and extend our understanding of the difficulty of labeling odors, particularly relative to the ease of labeling pictures.  This experiment forms the foundation for studies that will address the extent to which language impacts memory of perceptual information.