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Chemical Senses Advance Access originally published online on April 8, 2005
Chemical Senses 2005 30(4):353-365; doi:10.1093/chemse/bji030
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Chemical Senses vol. 30 no. 4 © The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

A Metamemory Perspective on Odor Naming and Identification

Fredrik U. Jönsson, Antoinette Tchekhova, Pär Lönner and Mats J. Olsson

Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Sweden

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

A metacognitive perspective is utilized to elucidate why it is so difficult to name common odors and what characterizes the subjective knowledge people have about their actual odor knowledge. Odor-naming failures are often accompanied by strong feelings of knowing (FOK) or feelings of imminent retrieval of what it is that smells. The paper's two experiments investigate FOK judgements and tip of the tongue (TOT) experiences for odor and person names. The data indicate that our inability to correctly name odors are typically not due to the often proposed uniquely poor association between odors and their proper names, but rather due to failures to identify the odors, that is, failures to know ‘what it is’. It was also found that (i) TOT experiences are very unusual for odor names and more so than for person names; (ii) FOK judgements about odor names are significantly less predictive of later retrieval than equivalent judgements about names of persons; (iii) FOK judgements were highly correlated with the familiarity of the cue (odor or picture of famous person), rendering some support for the idea that FOK judgements are based on the perceived familiarity of the cue triggering the FOK; and (iv) the idea that FOK judgements are based on the amount of available information about the sought-for memory (accessibility theory) was also supported.

Key words: feeling of knowing, odor identification, odor naming, tip of the tongue experience, tip of the nose experience


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