The effect of the essential oil of rosemary and lemon on memory ability in eighth graders

The significance of the effect of the aromatic fragrances of rosemary and lemon on memory was investigated. One hundred and four eighth grade students participated in the study. Students were randomly assigned to encoding groups of 30--35 for exposure to an aromatic fragrance condition. A 30-item word list was visually presented during exposure to the aromatic fragrance from water or the essential oil of rosemary or lemon. After a 1-½ hour delay, students were reassigned groups and asked to recall, directly and indirectly, the previously presented words while exposed to one of the three conditions. A test of direct recall asked the student to write as many previously presented words as possible. The indirect recall test consisted of 20 word fragments of words from the previous list and 20 additional filler words. Test order was randomly alternated. A 3 x 3 factorial analysis of variance was run to determine any level of significance. Findings indicated an interaction by order of test taken for direct recall. Students who took the direct recall test prior to the word fragment test did significantly better than those who took the word fragment test first. Also, those students exposed to lemon at encoding showed a higher average number of correct responses on the direct recall test. These findings suggest a positive link for children's memory ability to the aromatic fragrance of lemon. It may be plausible for lemon to facilitate young students in the learning and recall of information.