INFORMATION PROCESSING IN CHEMOSENSORY EXPERIENCE

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The overall goal of this proposal is to understand how an individual's experience of chemical exposure is related on the one hand to the sensory and physiological signals resulting from exposures to volatile compounds and on the other hand to psychological processes involved in perception, memory, and judgment. The proposed research pursue this goal by using an information-processing analysis of chemosensory perception as a unifying framework. Such an analysis seeks to describe how individuals process, combine, and interpret both the primary (sensory) and secondary (physiological) signals from chemosensory exposure and to understand how certain variables, such as personality factors, attentional and memory-retrieval strategies, and attributional tendencies, produce variations in the response. The three specific aims of the proposed research are: (1) to examine the role of selected antecedent, subject-based factors in producing variations in response to volatile organic compound (VOC) exposure, specifically, the roles of pre-existing dispositional factors such as negative affectivity and of pre-existing processing structures or mental models; (2) to examine the role of situational factors in producing variations in response to VOC exposures, specifically, the roles of instructional manipulation, multi- task processing, and social cues that guide the content and direction of attention during exposure to a volatile compound; and, (3) to examine the role of attributions (and misattributions) pertaining to arousal in producing variations in response to VOC exposure, specifically, the degree to which diffuse arousal tends to be prejudicially attributed to VOC exposure. The research will increase our understanding of the variation in human chemosensory perception. It has important implications for efforts to alleviate people's adverse responses to volatile compounds in indoor and outdoor air, and it may be of particular utility for addressing the higher incidence among women of adverse responses to low-level chemical exposures. The results can also provide information needed to evaluate the locus of responses (i.e., sensory, physiological, psychological) to volatiles that are currently advocated as alternative therapies.