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Semantic context facilitates odor identification in children and adults
Author(s) -
Goubet Nathalie,
McCall Daniel D.,
Ducz Jennifer K.,
Bingham Megan L.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.21124
Subject(s) - odor , percept , psychology , perception , cognitive psychology , identification (biology) , context (archaeology) , olfaction , developmental psychology , communication , neuroscience , biology , paleontology , botany
The current study investigated the influence of semantic cues on odor identification in preschool‐aged children and adults. We tested the hypothesis that odor identification in a multiple‐choice task is facilitated when choices belong to different semantic categories compared to when they belong to the same category. Participants were shown three color pictures, one of which represented the target odor and the other two depicted items that were either from the same or different semantic categories as the target odor. After smelling the target odor, participants were asked to identify the odor they had just smelled by pointing to one of the three pictures. Results indicated that while adults outperformed children, performance in both age groups was better when the picture of the target odor was semantically unrelated to the foil pictures. These data support the idea that well‐known deficits in odor identification may result from weak associations between the olfactory percept and semantic memory rather than from poor olfactory perception per se . © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc . Dev Psychobiol 56: 592–598, 2014.