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 onward affects these processes as well as how adults are influenced by the smells and flavors they encounter.
Current research topics include:
- Cross-modal associations between olfaction and vision
- Emotional influences on flavor and odor perception
- How children and adults demonstrate preferences for the visual appearance of plated food.
Faculty
Nathalie Goubet, Ph.D., Professor and Chair 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), Psychology 327 (Lab on Cognitive and Perceptual Development), and Psych 400 (Coping with Adversity: Resilience in Development)
Daniel D. McCall, Ph.D., 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 101 (Introductory Psychology), Psychology 205 (Introduction to Statistics), and Psychology 316 (Laboratory in Perception).
Students
Students Participate in research in a number of different ways:
Honors Research students – Spend most of their senior year developing and conducting an in-depth experimental study.
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.
Summer Research – Through Gettysburg College’s X-SIG program or the Psychology Department’s Shand Summer Research program.
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
Current Research Assistants, Honors Research and Independent Study Students
Macey Cohen ’23, Psychology Major
Matthew Cerbone ’24, Psychology & Biology Major
Esther Ekeh ’24, Psychology Major
Aleah Ellerbee ’24, Psychology Major
Anna Garst ’24, Psychology Major
Shukirti Khadka ’24, Psychology Major
Julia Wass ’24, Psychology & French Major
Tristan Neels ’24, Psychology Major
Michael Fellman ’25, Psychology & Mathematics Major
Selected Publications / Presentations
Goubet, N., & McCall, D. (2024). What is Your Most Important Odor? The Emotional and Social Significance of Odors in a US Adult Sample. International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste, Reyjakiv, Iceland (June).
McCall, D., Fellman, M., & Neels, T. (2024). The Effects of “Sweet” and “Sour” Label Descriptors on the Perception of Flavors and Odors. International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste, Reyjakiv, Iceland (June).
McCall, D., Cerbone, M., Gowland, J., Khadka, S., Kressen, J., & Wass, J. (2023). “Which odor Is most important to you?”: The emotional and social significance of odors in college students. Association for Psychological Science, Washington D.C. (May)
Goubet, N., McCall, D., Keohan, T., Acosta, J., Terranova, G., Kaiser, C., Shen, W., Higgins, K., & Quinn, M. (2020). “Your fries are touching my broccoli”: Sensitivity to food plating appearance in preschool to 5th grade children. Poster accepted for the International Congress on Infant Studies, Glasgow. Conference canceled due to COVID.
McCall, D., Mugford, E., Gaffney, S., Quinn, M (2019). Odor perception is altered when odors are mislabeled, even when participants are aware of the deception. Poster presented at the meetings of the Association for Psychological Science, Washington DC (May)
Goubet, N., McCall, D., & Jiang, T. (2019). BMI and eating-related personality differences predict disgust toward food images. Poster presented at the International Convention of Psychological Science, Paris (March).
Goubet, N., Durand, K., Schaal, B., & McCall, D.D. (2018). Seeing odors in color: Cross-modal associations in children and adults from two cultural environments. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 166, 380-399. DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2017.09.007
McCall, D., and Rubinstein, J. (2018). Odor Labels Affect the Stability of Olfactory-Visual Crossmodal Associations. Poster presented at the meetings of the Association for Chemoreception Sciences, Bonita Springs, FL (April).
McCall, D., Goubet, N., Kusnierz, C., & Anderson, T. (2017). Effort reduces food consumption, but not during distracted eating. Poster presented at the meetings of the European Congress of Psychology, Amsterdam. (July)
Goubet, N., Mason, K., & McCall, D. (2017). Facilitating effect of the olfactory context in the recognition of emotions in 5- and 9-year old children. Poster presented at the meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Austin, TX (April)
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.
Contact Us
Professor Nathalie Goubet: ngoubet@gettysburg.edu
Professor Daniel McCall: dmccall@gettysburg.edu
Psychology Department
Gettysburg College
Gettysburg, PA 17325
