Odour and Proustian memory: Reduction of context-dependent forgetting and multiple forms of memory

In Experiment 1, the reintroduction of the same ambient odour (lemon or lav ender) improved performance four weeks later in both free recall and recogn ition of a word list. This was a cross-over design that allowed direct comp arison between congruent and incongruent odour conditions. A further compar ison with an additional group showed that memory was not improved by the pr esence of a different odour. Experiment 2 investigated the effect of two od our cues (lemon and lavender) in the same cross-over design using three lea rning and memory tests: (1) free recall of a word list; (2) problem solving ; and (3) spatial learning. While recall of the word list and spatial learn ing were best when the same odour was present at both learning and test, th ere was no such context-dependent effect for the problem-solving task. Howe ver, the presence of the lavender odour at test improved performance in the problem-solving task, irrespective of the odour present at the first expos ure. Thus although lavender had some effect on problem solving, we saw cont ext-dependent retrieval only in free recall and spatial learning. We discus s the implications of this dissociation. Copyright (C), 2001 John Wiley & S ons, Ltd.