Memory for Odors and Odor Names: Modalities of Elaboration and Imagery

This study examined memory for common odors and odor names that were encoded with visual, verbal, and olfactory elaborations. In the first experiment, subjects elaborated olfactory stimuli by processing a picture of the odor's source, a name for the odor, or both. Two control groups were also included: One group was presented only with the odors, and another group was presented only with odor names. One week later, all subjects were given both a free recall test of odor names and an olfactory recognition test. In general, the elaboration groups outperformed the control groups, with the visual and verbal elaboration group demonstrating the best performance. In a second experiment, olfactory imaginal encoding of odor names was compared with visual imaginal encoding of the same names to measure the relative efficacy of same versus different modality encoding on later stimulus recognition. The results showed that olfactory imaginal encoding aided later recognition of odors, and visual imaginal encoding aided later picture recognition. It is suggested that different modalities contribute unique and mnemonically independent information to episodic memory performance.