Drs. Rodionova and Minor have investigated the effects of peppermint and lavender odors on the performance of elementary and middle school students in math and spelling. Odors were presented in the classroom while students were working on verbal and math tasks.

Peppermint presented in the air in a very low concentration (0.03 mg/m3) significantly improved the students' performance in the word-dictation spelling test. The effect manifested itself as a decrease of the mean number of errors and a respective increase of the mean school-mark. Peppermint, however, did not affect the performance in the text-copying test, which depended more on attention than on memory. A similar selectivity of peppermint towards the math tests was revealed. The performance in the arithmetic dictation was improved by peppermint, but the results in the written math test were not affected. It seems that in both dictation tests the performance depends on a common mental process that probably employs operative memory, which was facilitated by peppermint.

Lavender demonstrated a dual effect: like peppermint, it improved the performance in word dictation but adversely affected the students' performance in both math tests.