New article published – Reveals sensory asymmetry in spatial memory for smells and sounds.

Our new article, Asymmetric cross-sensory interference between spatial memories of sounds and smells revealed in a virtual reality environment was just published in Journal of experimental psychology: Learning, memory, and cognition.

We used virtual reality (VR) technology, together with the VR-compatible olfactometer developed in our lab, to study spatial memory for smells and sounds during active exploration and navigation similar to real life. We investigated whether spatial memory of odors would retroactively interfere with sounds.

Our results shows a decline in spatial memory performance over time and similar retroactive interference effects from smells and sounds. However, exploratory results indicated asymmetric effects in error trials where participants tended to misplace sounds in the vicinity of smells related to the same concepts (e.g., misplacing the sound of a coffee maker at the location of the smell of coffee). This points towards an olfactory dominance at the conceptual level.

The article can be read here: https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001493

Authors: Malina Szychowska, Karolina Ersson, and Jonas K. Olofsson