Children’s exposure to odors in everyday contexts predicts their odor awareness

Abstract

A great degree of interindividual variability has been reported in measures of psychophysical olfactory performance and odor awareness in both children and adults. Previous studies have suggested the possibility that one of the factors that might contribute to this variability could be the degree of odor exposure experienced in everyday contexts. In the present study, we hypothesized that children exposed to a greater variety of odors on a more frequent basis exhibit higher odor identification, discrimination, and odor awareness scores. We have found an effect of odor exposure on one aspect of the children’s olfactory knowledge as reflected in their reports of olfactory behavior, but not olfactory abilities. In so doing, we have replicated some of the previous findings in the literature of the female advantage in the olfactory domain. Namely, we report that girls showed a more profound metacognitive understanding of their sense of smell and a greater degree of olfaction-oriented behavior, which was not accounted for by a gender difference in verbal fluency. Nevertheless, girls did not outperform boys on any of the olfactory tests. Semi-longitudinal and longitudinal studies in verbally proficient children, employing both self- and parental reports of children’s odor exposure and repeated olfactory testing, may provide insight into whether children exposed more frequently to a greater variety of odors over the longer term come to exhibit greater odor awareness and superior performance in olfactory tests.