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Chem. Senses 28: 651-658, 2003
© Oxford University Press 2003

Olfactory Metacognition

Fredrik U. Jönsson and Mats J. Olsson

Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Sweden

Correspondence to be sent to: Fredrik Jönsson, Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Box 1225, S-75142 Uppsala, Sweden. e-mail: fredrik.jonsson{at}psyk.uu.se

The current paper focuses on the subjective knowledge people have about their ability to name odors. Previous investigations of such metacognitive aspects of olfactory cognition are very scarce and have yielded results that need further scrutiny. In two experiments, we investigated three metamemory judgments about odor identity. As opposed to previous findings, participants’ feeling of knowing judgments about odor identity predicted later recognition. Participants were also accurate but highly overconfident in their retrospective confidence in odor identification. A strong and imminent feeling of being able to name an odor, a so-called ‘tip of the nose’ experience, was found to predict later recall, but was otherwise poorly related to any partial activation of the odor name or other information associated with the odor. This makes it different from the commonly investigated ‘tip of the tongue’ phenomenon. The current study shows that olfactory metamemory is related to actual knowledge, a finding that is in line with what has been observed for other modalities.

Key words: confidence, feeling of knowing, metamemory, odor identification, tip of the nose, tip of the tongue


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