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Related Experiment Videos

Selective attention to the chemosensory modality.

C Spence1, B Kettenmann, G Kobal

  • 1Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, England. charles.spence@psy.ox.ac.uk

Perception & Psychophysics
|October 6, 2000
PubMed
Summary

This study shows that people can selectively focus their attention on smell and touch. Expecting a certain type of stimulus, like an odor, speeds up reaction times to that stimulus.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Sensory Perception
  • Human Attention

Background:

  • Behavioral responses are influenced by expectations of upcoming stimuli across sensory modalities.
  • Selective attention allows individuals to prioritize certain sensory inputs over others.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if selective attention can be directed towards the chemosensory modality.
  • To determine if expectancies modulate responses to olfactory and tactile stimuli.

Main Methods:

  • Participants performed speeded spatial discrimination tasks (left vs. right).
  • Stimuli included odors presented to either nostril and tactile stimuli to either hand.
  • A visual cue predicted the upcoming stimulus modality, valid on most trials.

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Main Results:

  • Response latencies were significantly faster for expected stimuli compared to unexpected stimuli.
  • This demonstrates that attention can be selectively allocated to chemosensory inputs.

Conclusions:

  • Behavioral responses to chemosensory stimuli are modulated by selective attention.
  • This finding extends the principles of attentional modulation to the sense of smell.