Noses know

[venta]

I've spent the last hour or so feeling randomly nostalgic about a particular period of my life. Well, not nostalgic, exactly, since it's not a time I look at with fondness, but unexpectedly reminded of it.

I've just worked out why. Last time I had on the jumper I'm wearing, I must also have been wearing a particular perfume. The jumper smells faintly of it, and it's a perfume I used to wear a lot at the time I'm remembering.

I find smell an unexpectedly evocative sense, and am regularly yanked to a particular memory because of some scent drifting past. Sometimes I find it difficult to place why the smell and the memory go together.

I wonder whether it's possible to associate them deliberately, and then use a scent as a particular 'trigger' to retrieve a memory.

Me? Cheating in the exam? Oh no. I always carry 200 small vials around with me...

Comments

Yes

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

There is such an effect, with scent as well as other sensory modalities. More interestingly this can have the opposite effect if the cue is not present, so if you learn something using a strong scent cue, you might find it hard to remember when the scent has gone.

This effect is even stronger with actual physiological state changes. So, if you really want to cheat in exams, do all your learning while intoxicated, then bring the relevant poison to the exam with you. Sadly, the proctors tend to be slightly stricter on this sort of thing :)

This is the only time my psychology degree is ever going to be useful, isn't it.

Yes. Yes, it is.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

State dependent learning is lovely, though. Overton (1964) and all that.

And yes, it does suggest that your most useful learning is going to be done in conditions that approximate those you're going to be using said learning in. And Weingartner (1978) showed that tiredness was a 'state' to be taken into account for these purposes.

See me recycle all my degree knowledge given the slightest pretext in the desperate hope that I didn't waste three years of learning ;)

Re: Yes. Yes, it is.

[metame.livejournal.com]

All that knowledge comes flooding back to you when you're online? (just like you were for those 3 years)

re: state depedent learning - I went to a comprehensive, does that count?
;-)