Larsson Maria, Willander Johan
Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2009 Jul;1170:318-23. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.03934.x.
This overview focuses on autobiographical odor memory and how information evoked by the olfactory sense may differ from memories evoked by visual or verbal information. Three key topics are addressed: (a) age distributions of evoked memories; (b) phenomenological experience; and (c) semantic processing. Current evidence suggests that memories triggered by olfactory information are localized to the first decade of life (< 10 years) rather than to young adulthood (10-30 years) which is the typical finding for memories evoked by verbal and visual information. Further, empirical evidence indicates that odor evoked memories are more emotional, associated with stronger feelings of being brought back in time, and have been thought of less often as compared to memories evoked by other sensory cues. Finally, previous observations of a significant impact of semantic influences on olfactory processing may also be generalized to retrieval of odor evoked autobiographical information. Specifically, both the age distribution and phenomenological qualities are affected by explicit knowledge of the odor cue. Taken together, the overall pattern of findings indicates that personal memories evoked by olfactory information are different from memories evoked by verbal or visual information.
本综述聚焦于自传体气味记忆，以及嗅觉所唤起的信息与视觉或言语信息所唤起的记忆可能存在的差异。探讨了三个关键主题：（a）唤起记忆的年龄分布；（b）现象学体验；（c）语义加工。目前的证据表明，由嗅觉信息触发的记忆集中在生命的第一个十年（<10岁），而非年轻成年期（10 - 30岁），后者是言语和视觉信息唤起记忆的典型情况。此外，实证证据表明，与其他感官线索唤起的记忆相比，气味唤起的记忆更具情感性，与更强烈的时光倒流之感相关联，且被回想的频率更低。最后，先前关于语义影响对嗅觉加工有显著作用的观察结果，或许也可推广至气味唤起的自传体信息的检索。具体而言，年龄分布和现象学特征均受气味线索明确知识的影响。综合来看，研究结果的总体模式表明，嗅觉信息唤起的个人记忆与言语或视觉信息唤起的记忆有所不同。
