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The study design seems silly. The subjects did better recalling scents after one hour when they had that whole hour to continue smelling any lingering particles
by jere 8y ago
The study design seems silly. The subjects did better recalling scents after one hour when they had that whole hour to continue smelling any lingering particles of the scent. That's surprising?
- Etheryte 8y agoWhile I'm not a scientist in the given field, my personal experience is that people get used to smells very quickly. That's also why historically manual dry rot searchers were notorious for running around buildings fast — once your body gets used to the scent, it's filtered out. I doubt an hour in a given environment would give you much advantage over say five minutes.
- toyg 8y agoIt’s actually one of the clearest showcases for humans’ astonishing talent of adapting to their surroundings. You can throw humans in shit-filled holes and, after a few hours, they just won’t care about the smell. It shows, at micro level, the sort of skill that led our species to planet domination.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoI think accustomisation differs considerably by person and mood, and probably other factors? I don't seem to be able to accustomise to ticking clocks, but other sounds I can. Some smells to me are anathema, but farmyard smells not so much (I grew up in the country). As your senses dull with age it gets easier to block things out IME.
- the-pigeon 8y agoIs there any reason to assume most mammals don't also have olfactory fatigue? Seems unlikely to be a human only thing.
- notahacker 8y agoYeah, it sounds suspiciously like the real finding might be "putting a peg over the nose for an hour in advance is a suboptimal way of preparing somebody for a smell-based recollection test", which is almost Ig-Nobel worthy