Serial position effects in recognition memory for odors.
Five experiments examined recognition memory for sequentially presented odors. Participants were presented with a sequence of odors and then had to identify an odor from the list in a test probe containing 2 odors. All experiments demonstrated enhanced recognition of odors presented at the start and end of a series, compared with those presented in the middle of the series when a 3-s retention interval between list termination and test was used. In Experiments 2 and 3, when a 30-s or 60-s retention interval was used, participants performed at slightly lower levels, although the serial position function was similar to that obtained with the 3-s retention interval. These results were noted with a 5-item (Experiments 1 and 4), 7-item (Experiment 2), 6-item (Experiment 3), and 4-item (Experiment 5) list of odors. As the number of test trials increased, recognition performance decreased, indicating a strong role for olfactory fatigue or interference in these procedures. A verbal suppression task, used in Experiments 4 and 5, had little influence on serial-position-based performance.
Reed
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Department of Psychology, University College London, United Kingdom. p.reed@ucl.ac.uk
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D009812:Odorants; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D012691:Serial Learning; D012903:Smell