Smell your way back to childhood: Autobiographical odor memory |
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Authors: | Johan Willander Maria Larsson |
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Institution: | Stockholm University, Department of Psychology, Stockholm, Sweden. jwill@psychology.su.se |
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Abstract: | This study addressed age distributions and experiential qualities of autobiographical memories evoked by different sensory
cues. Ninety-three older adults were presented with one of three cue types (word, picture, or odor) and were asked to relate
any autobiographical event for the given cue. The main aims were to explore whether (1) the age distribution of olfactory-evoked
memories differs from memories cued by words and pictures and (2) the experiential qualities of the evoked memories vary over
the different cues. The results showed that autobiographical memories triggered by olfactory information were older than memories
associated with verbal and visual information. Specifically, most odor-cued memories were located to the first decade of life
(<10 years), whereas memories associated with verbal and visual cues peaked in early adulthood (11–20 years). Also, odor-evoked
memories were associated with stronger feelings of being brought back in time and had been thought of less often than memories
evoked by verbal and visual information. This pattern of findings suggests that odor-evoked memories may be different from
other memory experiences. nt|mis|This work was supported by a grant from the Swedish Research Council (No. F0647/2001) to
M.L. |
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