INFLUENCE OF TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE ON THE PERCEPTION OF MULTICOMPONENT ODOR MIXTURES

This study examined whether a previously established (D. G. Laing & G. W. Francis, 1989) limited capacity to discriminate and identify the c omponents of olfactory mixtures resulted from the participants' lack o f familiarity with the task, training designed to optimize cognitive a nd perceptual performance, or professional experience in odor discrimi nation. The participants were a trained panel of 10 women (23-43 years old), and an expert panel of 8 male professional perfumers and flavor ists (25-55 years old). The individual chemical stimuli were 7 common dissimilar odorants of equal moderate intensity. An air dilution olfac tometer delivered a single odorant or a mixture containing up to 5 odo rants. The results indicated that for both panels only 3 or 4 componen ts of a complex mixture could be discriminated and identified and that this capacity could not be increased by training. Therefore, the limi t may be imposed physiologically or by processing constraints.