‘A good odour to breathe?’ The effect of pleasant ambient odour on human visual vigilance
✍ Scribed by Alison Gould; G.Neil Martin
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 64 KB
- Volume
- 15
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0888-4080
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The present study examined the e}ect of an alerting and a relaxing odour on human visual vigilance[ Three groups of undergraduates "N 43# completed a sustained visual vigilance task which required them to respond whenever a target stimulus appeared on a computer monitor[ One group completed the task in the presence of an alerting odour "peppermint#\ another did so in the presence of a relaxing odour "bergamot# and a third group completed the task in an unscented environment[ A 1×2×1 "sex×odour×diurnal preference# MANOVA was per! formed in order to determine group di}erences in response times and number of correct detections[ Participants in the bergamot condition detected fewer targets correctly within 0[14 seconds of the target appearing than did those in the peppermint or no!odour groups[ Exposure to bergamot was also associated with signi_cantly fewer correct detections in the second than in the _rst half of the task\ when compared with the other two conditions[ The results suggest that sustained exposure to a relaxing odour can impair visual vigilance[