The effect of odour reinstatement on children's episodic memory

Abstract

Children's memory reports are often sparse, which increases the need for efficient interview methods. The present study investigated whether odour reinstatement can aid children's memory and increase the amount of information recalled from an experienced event. Children (N = 106, mean age 10 years, 8 months) experienced a magic show where a vanilla odour was present and were interviewed about their memory of the event either one week, or six months, after the magic show. During the interview, half of the children re-experienced the same vanilla odour. In contrast to studies on adult participants, no odour-reinstatement effect was found with the child participants in the present study. On the other hand, odour reinstatement reduced the children's ratings of how strong their emotions were during the event. Thus, odour reinstatement may affect different forensically relevant factors, and this should be considered in future research.

Keywords:

• children's memory
• interviewing children
• odour
• context reinstatement

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Petra Valej for data collection and coding.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare [grant number 2009-0188].