1 School of Psychology, University of Sussex.
2 Crossmodal Research Laboratory, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford.
Psychol Sci. 2018 Oct;29(10):1642-1652. doi: 10.1177/0956797618781325. Epub 2018 Aug 1.
The human sense of smell is highly sensitive, often conveying important biological signals. Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that we commonly fail to notice suprathreshold environmental olfactory stimuli. The determinants of olfactory awareness are, as yet, unknown. Here, we adapted the inattentional-blindness paradigm to test whether olfactory awareness is dependent on attention. Across three experiments, participants performed a visual search task with either a high or low perceptual load (a well-established attentional manipulation) while exposed to an ambient coffee aroma. Consistent with our hypothesis, results showed that task load modulated olfactory awareness: 42.5% fewer participants in the high- than in the low-load condition reported noticing the coffee aroma. Our final experiment demonstrates that because of unique characteristics of olfactory habituation, the consequences of inattentional anosmia can persist even once attention becomes available. These findings establish the phenomenon of inattentional anosmia and have applied implications for predicting when people may miss potentially important olfactory information.
人类的嗅觉非常敏感，常常能传达重要的生物信号。然而，一些传闻证据表明，我们通常无法注意到阈上环境嗅觉刺激。嗅觉意识的决定因素尚不清楚。在这里，我们采用了疏忽盲视范式来测试嗅觉意识是否依赖于注意力。在三个实验中，参与者在暴露于环境咖啡香气的同时执行高或低感知负载（一种经过充分验证的注意力操作）的视觉搜索任务。与我们的假设一致，结果表明任务负载调节了嗅觉意识：在高负载条件下，报告注意到咖啡香气的参与者比低负载条件下少 42.5%。我们的最后一个实验表明，由于嗅觉习惯的独特特征，即使注意力可用，疏忽性失嗅的后果也可能持续存在。这些发现确立了疏忽性失嗅的现象，并对预测人们何时可能错过潜在重要嗅觉信息具有应用意义。
