Odours Cue Memory For Odour Associated Words

The ability of odours to cue vivid and emotionally intense memories is well known. However the majority of research has focused on the extent to which odours can act as environmental cues to memory, where odours are presented alongside the stimuli to be remembered, rather than the extent to which pre-existing associations between odour and odour related stimuli might influence memory. Here, participants (n=45 females in each experiment) were presented with words (two groups of odour associated words and one neutral) on a computer screen and randomly assigned to one of 3 conditions where they recalled the words whilst inhaling from a bottle either rosemary, jasmine or no odour (exp 1) and peppermint, bergamot or no odour (exp 2). In experiment two, participants then completed a Lexical Decision Task (LDT). Experiment one revealed that for those in the rosemary group, significantly more rosemary versus jasmine and neutral words were recalled. Experiment two replicated this effect for peppermint, though no odour congruent effects were found in the LDT. These findings demonstrate that certain odours are able to cue memory for odour associated words. Results are discussed in relation to connected odour association research and possible theoretical frameworks to account for these findings.