Teen sniffs out scents, memories link

Does the smell of flowers or oranges help you remember things better?
Fourteen-year-old Mackenzie Grace wanted to answer that question.

“I definitely think there’s a connection between what we smell and the memories those smells trigger,” Grace said.

The ninth-grade student at the Out-of-Door Academy explored the correlation between teenagers’ memories and lavender, coffee and citrus scents.

She conducted a four-day experiment for her “Smells Like Teen Memory” project, which she presented Jan. 29, at the Sarasota Regional Science Fair.

The East County student is waiting for the results of the competition, in which she has competed since she was in sixth grade.

Her projects typically focus on links between memories and other influences, such as music and smells.

“I’m fascinated with psychology and behaviors,” Grace said. “I like looking inside how we think and why certain factors tap into memories we have. It’s really interesting to me.”

Grace was the only student from the East County school who attended the local competition.

ODA chemistry teacher Theresa Beeman attended the event with Grace and allowed her to conduct experiments in her classroom before school started.

Six students participated in the study.

Grace wanted to test a larger group of students, but meeting before school for four days was a harder sell than she anticipated, she said, laughing.

The test


Each day before the students arrived, Grace put a few drops of one of the three selected scents into a diffuser.

She emitted scents of lavender and citrus blends through the diffuser and placed cups of freshly brewed coffee on the table in front of the participants.

The fourth day, Grace didn’t emit any scents into the room.

Students watched a slideshow of 10 different playing cards.

Each slide displayed the card on the screen for 10 seconds.

After students watched all of the slides, they wrote down the order of the cards that appeared on the screen.

Grace was surprised by the results.

“I thought more students would remember a larger percentage of the cards I showed,” Grace said.

Students remembered the order of the highest number of cards when lavender filled the room, followed by no scent and citrus blend.

On average, students who smelled cups of coffee only correctly remembered the order of four cards, Grace showed.

“I expected that coffee would have an energizing effect that might stimulate the memory,” Grace said.

Although Grace doesn’t feel she proved on paper a definite connection between the teenagers’ memories and the scents she provided, she doesn’t doubt that scents trigger memories.

“When we smell something, it can calm us,” Grace said. “There absolutely is a link between the two, I just didn’t find it this time.”

Contact Amanda Sebastiano at [email protected].