Gettysburg Odor & Flavor Lab

About the lab

The Odor & Flavor Lab is housed in the Psychology Department at Gettysburg College.  Our goal is to investigate the psychological processes that are involved with smell, taste, and flavor perception.  We are interested in how development from birth on affects these processes as well as how adults are influenced by the smells and flavors they encounter.

Watch a video about some of the research done in the lab.

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Faculty

Nathalie Goubet, Ph.D.,  Professor of Psychology

My research interests focus on the sense of olfaction as a window to cognition and emotion.  As a Developmental Psychologist, I am interested in how the sense of smell develops, and how it affects children's understanding of the world. Current projects explore the effects of familiar odors on pain perception, the effects of disgust on facial expression recognition, and cross-modal associations between olfaction and vision.  I teach Psychology 225 (Developmental Psychology), Psychology 305 (Experimental Methods), and Psychology 327 (Lab on Cognitive and Perceptual Development)

Daniel D. McCall, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology

My research investigates psychological processes in taste, flavor, and olfaction.  Current projects explore the impact of the emotion of disgust on the perceptual processing of odors and flavors, and cross-modal associations between vision, olfaction, and taste.  I also conduct studies on the development of olfaction in children from preschool to 6th grade.  I teach Psychology 205 (Introduction to Statistics), Psychology 316 (Laboratory in Perception), and Psychology 341 (History of Experimental Psychology)

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Students

Students Participate in research in a number of different ways:

• Research Assistants -  Help in all phases of conducting research.  They prepare stimuli, recruit and schedule research participants, conduct the testing, code and analyze data.  They also frequently appear as co-authors on publications and conference presentations.
• Classwork - Students in Prof. McCall's Psychology 316 and Prof. Goubet's Psychology 327 classes conduct research in the lab as part of their course requirements.
• Independent Study students - Spend one semester designing and conducting their own original research project
• Honors Research students - Spend most of their senior year developing and conducting an in-depth experimental study.

Current Research Assistants, Honors Research

and Independent Study Students

• Alexandra Casella '17, Psychology and English Major
• Allison Cole '18, Psychology and Spanish Major
• Natalie Purinton '18, Psychology Major
• Cayla Kusnierz '17, Psychology Major
• Matthew Morrow '17, Psychology Major
• Cynthia Filgueira '18, Psychology and Spanish Major
• Nicole Buckley, '19, Psychology Major

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Recent Publications / Presentations

Goubet, N., McCall, D.D., Ducz, J.K., Bingham, M.L. (2014).  Semantic context facilitates odor identification in children and adults.  Developmental Psychobiology, 56, 592-598.  DOI: 10.1002/dev.21124

Durand, K., Baudouin, J-Y., Lewkowicz, D.J., Goubet, N., & Schaal, B. (2013).  Eye-catching odors:  Familiar odors promote attention and sustained gazing to faces and eyes in 4 month-old infants.  Plos One, August 28, 2013.

Thompson, R.B., Cothran, T., & McCall, D. (2012).  Age and gender interact in preschoolers' help-seeking:  Evidence for differential responses to changes in task difficulty.  Journal of Child Language, 39, 1107-1120.

O'Sullivan, L.P., Goubet, N., & Berthier, N.E. (2012).  L'atteinte de l'objet chez l'enfant ne premature [Reaching for objects in prematurely born infants].  Enfance, 64, 25-34.

Goubet, N., Strasbaugh, K.D., Chesney, J.L. (2007).  Familiarity breeds content?  Soothing effect of a familiar odor in full-term newborns.  Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 28, 1-6.

Goubet, N., McCall, D., Durand, K., Mason, K., Kowker, A., Schaal, B. (2015). Odor-color cross-modal associations in American adults. Poster presented at the meetings of the Association for Psychological Science, New York, NY (May).

McCall, D., Kwak, S., & Rubinstein, J. (2015). Coco-mint and ginger-nilla:  Cross-modal associations in the perception of "sharp" and "round" odor mixtures. Poster presented at the meetings of the Association for Psychological Science, New York, NY (May).

Hare, B.N. & McCall, D.D. (2015). Taste perception and motivation to consume in restrained eaters. Poster presented at the meetings of the Association for Psychological Science, New York, NY (May).

Hare, B.N., Waage, S., Weinbrom, A.A., Goubet, N., & McCall, D.D. (2014). Cross-modal associations between odors, colors, and abstract visual forms.  Poster presented at the meetings of the Eastern Psychological Association, Boston, MA (March)

Durand, K., Goubet, N., McCall, D., and Schaal, B. (2013).  Seeing odors in color:  Cross-modal associations in 5-10-year-old children.  Poster presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Seattle, WA

McCall, D.D. & Dochat, C.L. (2013).  Trigeminal stimulation and odor intensity mediate olfactory-visual cross-modal correspondences.  Poster presented at the meetings of the Association for Psychological Science, Washington, D.C.

Ducz, J., & Goubet, N. (2012).  Olfaction-pain interactions:  A familiar odor enhances pain tolerance. Poster presented at the XVI International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste, Stockholm, Sweden.

McCall, D.D. (2012).  The enhancement of flavor detection under conditions of disgust.  Poster presented at the XVI International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste, Stockholm, Sweden.

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Contact Information

Nathalie Goubet                        

email:  ngoubet@gettysburg.edu

office:  (717) 337-6177

Dan McCall

email:  dmccall@gettysburg.edu

office:  (717) 337-6176

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