Your nose knows when you’re busy: Distractions destroy sense of smell

IF you have ever burned your dinner after getting distracted then this research will make a lot of sense.

Scientists have found that you can temporarily lose your sense of smell when your attention is diverted.

Researchers say it is the first time that the condition ‘inattentional smell blindness’, or ‘inattentional anosmia’, has been proven in an experiment.

Lead researcher Dr Sophie Forster, of the University of Sussex, said: ‘People are less likely to notice a smell if they are busily engaged in a task.

‘Many of us have experienced this: we’ve been working in a room when a new person has entered and said that the room smells of something such as someone’s lunch, but that those already in the room had failed to notice it.

‘Previous research has told us that, unique to the sense of smell, there is a window of approximately 20 minutes before the brain is no longer able to detect it.

‘Our study could have a range of implications. For example, if you are busy focusing on a task you may be less likely to be tempted by food smells.’

The study paves the way to test how busy people react to ‘threat smells’ such as smoke and gas. Researchers asked participants to search for an object in a room that smelled strongly of coffee.

After leaving the room people were asked questions to determine whether they had noticed the smell. Those whose attention was occupied by the task were 42.5 per cent less likely to do so.

In a follow-up experiment, participants were asked what they could smell while they were still in the room which smelled of coffee. Some 65 per cent couldn’t detect the coffee because they had habituated while doing the task.

The research, conducted with Professor Charles Spence, of Oxford University, is published in Psychological Science.