A sommelier is a highly trained and knowledgeable professional who is an expert at all things wine. It is known that expertise in any field has a dramatic affect on cognition, including memory and language. Sommeliers are considered olfactory experts in wine odor memory. Have you ever seen someone smell a glass of red wine and say “Ah, a hint of oak and cherry”? That would be a sommelier.
In the article, “Scents and Reminiscence: Olfactory Influences on Memory Consolidation in the Sleeping Human Brain” Shanahan and Gottfried review the literature on olfactory targeted memory reactivation (TMR) to demonstrate how odors can be successfully utilized to shape memory consolidation. In one of the reviewed studies, Rasch and colleagues found that an odor presented during an encoding task and again during slow-wave sleep improves memory consolidation, resulting in better recall. They observed enhanced performance on card location memory test after exposure to the same rose odor presented during encoding and slow-wave sleep. But what about people who already have extensive consolidated memory, such as experts like sommeliers? Instead of using odor to enhance memory, they have memory for specific odors.
In the study “Wine Experts’ Recognition of Wine Odors is Not Verbally Mediated” Dr. Croijmans and colleagues examine the role that language plays in odor recognition memory for wine experts. The experts had a specific skill set of better wine odor memory than novices and better name-odor pairing than lay people. According to previous research, this would suggest that the experts’ superior odor recognition memory may be verbally mediated. The study was performed in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, the researchers employed a language manipulation task to replicate wine experts’ better odor recognition memory for wine odors, wine-related odors, and common odors. One group of experts participated in a naming condition in which they overtly named the odors during encoding. The other group participated in a no-naming condition in which they only smelled the odors. Both conditions of the experiment were done twice, once with experts and once with novices. If odor recognition depended on verbally naming the odors, then the naming condition group should perform better on recognition. After statistical analysis, the researchers found that overt naming of odors during encoding did not boost recognition memory for odors. Additionally, explicit verbalization did not provide any additional benefit to experts over novices. This suggests that experts’ memory advantage is not verbally mediated.
In Experiment 2, a verbal interference paradigm was used to test the causal role of verbalization in odor recognition memory for wines and common odors. The researchers wanted to test if the covert speech mediated the odor recognition memory advantage in experts. To control for the effects of the dual-task on working memory, they also included a visual interference task. If language is involved in odor memory then recognition would be worse under verbal interference than visual interference. Conversely, if language is independent from odor memory than there would be no difference in recognition under verbal and visual interference. They found no effect of interference type on recognition for wine odors. Wine experts displayed better recognition for wine odors than novices, even when their ability to verbally encode was interfered with. This also suggests that wine odor recognition memory is not verbally mediated. All in all, the study shows that language does not play a causal role in recognition memory for odors once expertise has been acquired.
It would be interesting to see the effect of olfactory TMR on aspiring sommeliers. Perhaps novice wine smellers could use TMR as they acquire their expertise. Or maybe expert odor recognition for wine could be used in conjunction with TMR to consolidate other memories, like a specific wine odor to remember the capital of each state. Anyhow, the developing research on odor recognition and memory consolidation can provide more insight into smell and its role in human memory.
Croijmans, I., Arshamian, A., Speed, L.J., Majid, A. (2021). Wine Experts’ Recognition of Wine Odors Is Not Verbally Mediated. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150(3), 545-559. doi:10.1037/xge0000949
Shanahan, L.K., Gottfried, J.A. (2017). Scents and Reminiscence: Olfactory Influences on Memory Consolidation in the Sleeping Human Brain. Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory Consolidation, 335–346. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-45066-7_20
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