7th Annual Meeting of the International Multisensory Research Forum
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M. Luisa Demattè

Colour cues influence odour discrimination more than do shape cues
Poster Presentation

M. Luisa Demattè
Department of Cognitive Sciences and Education - University of Trento - Italy

Daniel Sanabria
Department of Experimental Psychology - University of Oxford - UK

Charles Spence
Department of Experimental Psychology - University of Oxford - UK

     Abstract ID Number: 95
     Full text: Not available
     Last modified: March 17, 2006
     Presentation date: 06/20/2006 10:00 AM in Hamilton Building, Foyer
     (View Schedule)

Abstract
People’s identification of odours can be influenced by the simultaneous presentation of irrelevant visual cues. In particular, both colour patches and pictures have been reported to influence olfaction, albeit at different levels of information processing. Here, we investigated whether simple drawings sharing different degrees of compatibility with odour targets would differentially interfere with odour discrimination performance. Participants in our study made speeded odour discrimination responses (strawberry vs. lemon) while viewing irrelevant visual information (i.e., a black line drawing of a square, a lemon, or a strawberry coloured either white, yellow, or red). The results showed that the accuracy of participants’ odour discrimination responses was significantly influenced by odour-colour compatibility. In particular, participants responded to the lemon odour significantly less accurately when a red picture was presented than when a yellow picture was presented. By contrast, the congruency of the images (square, lemon, or strawberry) had no effect on the accuracy of participants’ odour detection responses. These results provide the first empirical demonstration that different kinds of visual information may have differential effects on olfactory discrimination performance. What’s more, our results would appear to demonstrate that colour compatibility may exert a stronger interference on odour discrimination than does image compatibility.

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