Post by Any of N on Aug 26, 2015 4:23:20 GMT
Going back to Bob's original post, I still like the idea of using odor memories to help solve cold cases. I happen to work in a field that involves perception research, and I can easily look through some related materials. Here's something I found interesting. It's a passage from a recent research book (with references omitted for easier reading).
My takeaway is that maybe odors could indeed be used to help witnesses recall details of a crime. But you have to find the right odor(s), and be on guard for the effects of emotions. From what else I'm reading, it also seems to be true that people can recall odors encountered decades before.
On Bob's specific thought of identifying the foul odor of the rapist by cuing the victims, I'm not seeing anything to discount it. So if the odor really was something rare, it might be worth considering.
The claim is often made that odors are “better” than other memory cues. However, empirical assessment negates this assertion if better refers to memory accuracy. It has never been shown that odors bring back more accurate memories than other sensory stimuli. Rather, it seems like the distinctive emotional salience and evocativeness of odor-evoked memories makes them more real and this then leads to the false impression that these memories are especially accurate. The confidence that one's recollections are true, which is so hard to resist when memories are colored by emotional experience, is similar to what often emerges in eyewitness testimony. Eyewitnesses recalling emotionally charged episodes are often extremely confident that their recollections are accurate, but research shows that these memories are often incorrect.
There is, however, one way in which odors might be better memory cues. They may be more likely to elicit recall for events which otherwise would never be remembered. That is, odors may unlock memories whose only “mental tag” is the odor that was present when the memory was encoded. A specific odor may be explicitly tied to one event in life and no other because that scent was only encountered in that particular situation, whereas visual or verbal versions of the sample cue are multiply encountered in various iterations of similar events. ... The ability to elicit a memory that might otherwise never be retrieved is possibly the key feature that makes odors “better” than other memory cues. However, this claim has not been experimentally verified.
Source: Odor memory and the role of associative learning. Chapt. 6, Olfactory Cognition. 2012.
There is, however, one way in which odors might be better memory cues. They may be more likely to elicit recall for events which otherwise would never be remembered. That is, odors may unlock memories whose only “mental tag” is the odor that was present when the memory was encoded. A specific odor may be explicitly tied to one event in life and no other because that scent was only encountered in that particular situation, whereas visual or verbal versions of the sample cue are multiply encountered in various iterations of similar events. ... The ability to elicit a memory that might otherwise never be retrieved is possibly the key feature that makes odors “better” than other memory cues. However, this claim has not been experimentally verified.
Source: Odor memory and the role of associative learning. Chapt. 6, Olfactory Cognition. 2012.
On Bob's specific thought of identifying the foul odor of the rapist by cuing the victims, I'm not seeing anything to discount it. So if the odor really was something rare, it might be worth considering.