TY - JOUR
T1 - Real and Imagined Smellscapes
AU - Lindborg, PerMagnus
AU - Liew, Kongmeng
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - The smellscape is the olfactory environment as perceived and understood, consisting of odours and scents from multiple smell sources. To what extent can audiovisual information evoke the smells of a real, complex, and multimodal environment? To investigate smellscape imagination, we compared results from two studies. In the first, onsite participants (N = 15) made a sensory walk through seven locations of an open-air market. In the second, online participants (N = 53) made a virtual walk through the same locations reproduced with audio and video recordings. Responses in the form of free-form verbal annotations, ratings with semantic scales, and a ‘smell wheel’, were analysed for environmental quality, smell source type and strength, and hedonic tone. The degree of association between real and imagined smellscapes was measured through canonical correlation analysis. Hedonic tone, as expressed through frequency counts of keywords in free-form annotations was significantly associated, suggesting that smell sources might generally be correctly inferred from audiovisual information, when such imagination is required. On the other hand, onsite ratings of olfactory quality were not significantly associated with online ratings of audiovisual reproductions, when participants were not specifically asked to imagine smells. We discuss findings in the light of cross-modal association, categorisation, and memory recall of smells.
AB - The smellscape is the olfactory environment as perceived and understood, consisting of odours and scents from multiple smell sources. To what extent can audiovisual information evoke the smells of a real, complex, and multimodal environment? To investigate smellscape imagination, we compared results from two studies. In the first, onsite participants (N = 15) made a sensory walk through seven locations of an open-air market. In the second, online participants (N = 53) made a virtual walk through the same locations reproduced with audio and video recordings. Responses in the form of free-form verbal annotations, ratings with semantic scales, and a ‘smell wheel’, were analysed for environmental quality, smell source type and strength, and hedonic tone. The degree of association between real and imagined smellscapes was measured through canonical correlation analysis. Hedonic tone, as expressed through frequency counts of keywords in free-form annotations was significantly associated, suggesting that smell sources might generally be correctly inferred from audiovisual information, when such imagination is required. On the other hand, onsite ratings of olfactory quality were not significantly associated with online ratings of audiovisual reproductions, when participants were not specifically asked to imagine smells. We discuss findings in the light of cross-modal association, categorisation, and memory recall of smells.
KW - smellscape
KW - environment
KW - perception
KW - smell
KW - imagination
KW - memory
KW - crossmodal
KW - ODOR
KW - TAXONOMY
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U2 - 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.718172
DO - 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.718172
M3 - RGC 21 - Publication in refereed journal
C2 - 35002828
SN - 1664-1078
VL - 12
JO - Frontiers in Psychology
JF - Frontiers in Psychology
M1 - 718172
ER -