Asymmetric Cross-Sensory Interference Between Spatial Memories of Sounds and Smells Revealed in a Virtual Reality Environment
Number of Authors: 3 2026 (English) In: Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory and Cognition, ISSN 0278-7393, E-ISSN 1939-1285, Vol. 52, no 3, p. 403-421Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Navigating the world and remembering events require processing information from various sensory modalities. However, research on human spatial memory and navigation is dominated by vision and little is known about the nonvisual senses. According to a recent theoretical framework, spatial memory and navigation evolved together with olfaction to aid navigation. We tasked participants with memorizing locations of odors and sounds in a virtual reality setting, hypothesizing that odor memory representations would disproportionately interfere with sound memory representations. In three recall times (immediate, 15-min delay, and 1-week delay), we tested whether spatial memory of odors would retroactively interfere with sounds. We predicted that performance should decline more in the sensory modality encoded first than in the modality encoded second, due to retroactive interference, especially when sounds are encoded first. Results indicated a decline in spatial memory performance over time, and similar retroactive interference effects from smells and sounds, but no olfactory-specific interference. However, exploratory results indicated that olfactory retroactive interference is apparent in error trials where participants tended to misplace sounds in the vicinity of smells related to the same concepts (e.g., misplacing the sound of a coffee maker at the location of the smell of coffee). There was no similar interference from sounds on odor misplacements, suggesting asymmetry or “olfactory dominance,” at the conceptual level. Our exploratory results suggest that the hypothesized unique role of olfactory retroactive interference might manifest in the type of errors, rather than in overall performance.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages 2026. Vol. 52, no 3, p. 403-421
Keywords [en]
auditory spatial memory, memory interference, odor–place association, olfactory spatial memory, sound–place association
National Category
Psychology (Excluding Applied Psychology)
Research subject Psychology
Identifiers URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-246080 DOI: 10.1037/xlm0001493 ISI: 001497918700001 PubMedID: 40440112 Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105007753282 OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-246080 DiVA, id: diva2:1993148
Funder Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, KAW 2016:0229 Swedish Research Council, 2023-01075 Swedish Research Council, 2020-00266
Note This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council grant to Malina Szychowska (Grant 2023-01075), and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (Grant KAW 2016:0229) and the Swedish Research Council to Jonas K. Olofsson (Grant 2020-00266).
2025-08-292025-08-292026-03-10 Bibliographically approved