Visual search performance depends on the congruency of olfactory sensations: Your nose knows what you are looking for!

When we search for an object in a cluttered scene, visual features of the object such as its color, size and shape help it to stand out from objects in the background. We explored whether the characteristic scent of an object influences one's performance and response times in a visual search task.
Go to the profile of Mark Greenlee
Mark Greenlee
Research Professor, Universität Regensburg
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Nature
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Visual search performance depends on the congruency of olfactory sensations - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Visual search performance depends on the congruency of olfactory sensations

Our findings point to an odorant-visual object congruency effect. On-going nasal exposure to congruent aromas enhances search performance of visual targets presented among distractors. The size of the congruency effect depends on the baseline performance level in individual participants when they were tested without the presence of an odorant. Our results suggest that our olfactory sense influences the saliency of a visual target presented among distractors. Such multisensory effects could influence our food choices during everyday grocery-shopping decisions.

Caption

The figure depicts a typical trial where the participant is exposed to the scent of a fruit (e.g., a lemon) and shortly thereafter is cued to search for a lemon among a circular array of fruits. The correct response is given by moving the cursor to the placeholder where the target was located.

For more details, see the Open Access publication in Scientific Reports:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-25995-1

Go to the profile of Mark Greenlee
Mark Greenlee
Research Professor, Universität Regensburg

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Experimental Psychology
Humanities and Social Sciences > Behavioral Sciences and Psychology > Psychological Methods > Experimental Psychology
Psychophysics
Life Sciences > Biological Sciences > Neuroscience > Cognitive Neuroscience > Perception > Psychophysics

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