Livermore A, Laing D G
Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia.
Percept Psychophys. 1998 May;60(4):650-61. doi: 10.3758/bf03206052.
The present study investigates the hypothesis that complex object odors (odors that emanate from flowers, foods, sewage, etc.) that consist of dozens of odorants are processed and encoded as discrete entities, as if each was a single chemical odor. To test this hypothesis, the capacity of trained subjects to discriminate and identify the components of stimuli consisting of one to eight object odors was determined. The results indicated that subjects could only identify up to four object odors in a mixture, which is similar to earlier findings with mixtures that contained only single chemical odors. The limited capacity was also reflected in the number of odors selected, regardless of whether the choices were correct or incorrect, in confidence ratings, and in decision times. The identification of a limited number of object odors in every mixture that was presented suggests that both associative (synthetic) and dissociative (analytic) processes are involved in the perceptual analysis of odor mixtures.
由数十种气味剂组成的复杂物体气味（从花朵、食物、污水等散发出来的气味）被作为离散实体进行处理和编码，就好像每种都是单一化学气味一样。为了验证这一假设，测定了经过训练的受试者辨别和识别由一到八种物体气味组成的刺激成分的能力。结果表明，受试者在混合物中最多只能识别出四种物体气味，这与早期关于仅包含单一化学气味的混合物的研究结果相似。这种有限的能力还体现在所选气味的数量上，无论选择正确与否，也体现在置信度评级和决策时间上。在呈现的每种混合物中识别出有限数量的物体气味，这表明联想（合成）和分离（分析）过程都参与了气味混合物的感知分析。
