Haslett student presents research at seventh annual Celebration of Scholars event

2017 May 2

Carthage College held the seventh annual Celebration of Scholars event on Friday, April 28, 2017. Celebration of Scholars is a poster exhibition that features original research, scholarship, and creative work completed by Carthage students.

Elizabeth Wenzel of Haslett presented "Short-Term Memory for Odors is Surprisingly Poor" at the event.

This is the project's abstract:

"There is a common belief that odor memory is special and long-lasting. In many studies of odor memory, a "remembered" odor is to be selected, after a delay, from a pair of odors (the previously-presented odor and a randomly selected foil). This study examines short-term odor memory (STOM) for odors with foils specifically selected to be similar to or different from the remembered odor. Forty-seven undergraduates (36 females) completed a 3-Alternative Forced Choice task in which they were presented with a target odor followed by two odors (after a 5 or 30 second delay), and indicated which odor, if either, was the same as the remembered odor. There were 9 odors divided into 3 categories ("sweet" spices, savory spices and uncommon odors). After the memory task, participants also rated each odor's intensity, familiarity and pleasantness, and attempted to name the odor. Overall, performance after a 5-second delay was 74% correct, with a decrease of ~4% with a delay of 30 seconds. Recognition memory was better for uncommon than common odors, and when the foil was not in the same category as the odor to remember. Ability to name odors was very poor. Participants rated common odors to be more familiar and pleasant than uncommon odors. STOM is surprisingly poor, particularly when it involves discriminating between odors that are in the same category."