The formation and content of odor memory from childhood

As illustrated by Marcel Proust’s madeleine, childhood olfactory autobiographical memory carries a stronger positive emotional valence than memories associated with other senses. However, little is known about its content or the conditions of encoding and maintenance. Here, we asked 647 participants to freely recall and characterize their earliest childhood olfactory memory. We found that this memory is typically encoded around age six, involves pleasant odors embedded within rich multisensory contexts, and retains a strong positive emotional valence despite age-related declines in some experiential qualities. The most frequently reported scenes took place at home, in the presence of the mother, and were predominantly associated with food-related odors, although natural-vegetation odors were also commonly reported. By contrast, the non-olfactory memory is encoded earlier, visually dominated, less multisensory, less pleasant, and more frequently associated with institutional settings and friends. These findings characterize childhood olfactory memory and highlight its distinctive content among autobiographical memories.