Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 5, 2026
Highlighting and Reducing the Impact of Negative Aging Stereotypes During Older Adults' Cognitive Testing
Published on: January 24, 2020
Effects of age and cognition on a cross-cultural paediatric adaptation of the Sniffin' Sticks Identification Test
Laís Orrico Donnabella Bastos1, Marilisa Mantovani Guerreiro2, Andrew John Lees3
1Complex motor disorders service, Neurology Department and Physical and Occupational Therapy Department, HC-FCM, University of Campinas, UNICAMP, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil; Neurology Department, HC-FCM, University of Campinas, UNICAMP, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil.
Objectives:
To study the effects of age and cognition on the performance of children aged 3 to 18 years on a culturally adapted version of the 16 item smell identification test from Sniffin' Sticks (SS16).
Methods:
A series of pilots were conducted on 29 children aged 3 to 18 years old and 23 adults to produce an adapted version of the SS16 suitable for Brazilian children (SS16-Child). A final version was applied to 51 children alongside a picture identification test (PIT-SS16-Child) to access cognitive abilities involved in the smell identification task. In addition 20 adults performed the same tasks as a comparison group.
Results:
The final adapted SS16-Child was applied to 51 children with a mean age of 9.9 years (range 3-18 years, SD=4.25 years), of which 68.3% were girls. There was an independent effect of age (p<0.05) and PIT-SS16-Child (p<0.001) on the performance on the SS16-Child, and older children reached the ceiling for scoring in the cognitive and olfactory test. Pre-school children had difficulties identifying items of the test.
Discussion/Conclusions:
A cross-culturally adapted version of the SS16 can be used to test olfaction in children but interpretation of the results must take age and cognitive abilities into consideration.
