Odors have long been thought to be particularly powerful cues of memory in the public imagination. However, when odor associative memory has been investigated in the laboratory the pattern of results has been somewhat surprising and much more interesting. In the current project, we put forward a model which aims to account for the various results reported in the literature and explain when odors will become associated to events in memory. The model argues that odor association at encoding is dependent on the degree to which the odor itself is the focus of attention, whether the same odor has previously been associated with a similar event, and to what degree the odor can inform a behavioral response during the event. Likewise, during retrieval, the effectiveness of the odor as a cue of memory depends on the degree to which the odor is perceived as being similar enough to that present during encoding and whether the odor is the focus of attention. Our model not only accounts for previous findings, but makes novel predictions. The purpose of the current project is to test our model and determine its feasibility as an explanation of when, and to what degree, odors associate with events in memory and/or retrieve specific memories.