Odor discrimination in children aged 4â12 years
Anna Oleszkiewicz1,2, Oshin Behl1, Tim Grahl1
1Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Smell and Taste Clinic, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Insights
Children
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Chemosensation
Background:
- Olfaction is functional at birth, but some chemosensory abilities develop with age.
- Odor discrimination is crucial for identifying environmental smells and guiding behavior.
- Developmental changes in odor discrimination, independent of verbal and olfactory experience, are understudied.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the developmental trajectory of odor discrimination abilities in children.
- To explore the utility of odor enantiomers in assessing olfactory development.
- To test the hypothesis that enantiomeric odor discrimination is less susceptible to age effects than common odor discrimination.
Main Methods:
- Examined olfactory discrimination in children aged 4–12 years.
- Utilized three common odor pairs and five enantiomeric odor pairs.
- Designed a protocol to minimize verbal and cognitive bias.
Main Results:
- Children showed a diminished age advantage when discriminating enantiomeric odor pairs compared to common odor pairs.
- This suggests that odor enantiomer discrimination is less influenced by age-related cognitive and experiential factors.
- The findings highlight the unique properties of enantiomers in studying olfactory development.
Conclusions:
- Odor discrimination abilities develop differently based on odor type.
- Enantiomeric odor discrimination offers a valuable tool for studying olfactory development.
- Future research should further explore the neural and experiential underpinnings of enantiomer perception in children.
Abstract:
Olfaction is functional at birth and newborns use their sense of smell to navigate their environment. Yet, certain chemosensory abilities are subject to experience and develop with age. It has been argued that odor discrimination is a key ability enabling organisms to capture and distinguish odors occurring in the environment to further identify them and formulate a behavioral response. Yet, the development of odor discrimination abilities has been overlooked in the literature, with few attempts to investigate developmental changes in odor discrimination abilities independent of verbal abilities and olfactory experience. Here, building on these attempts, we propose a novel approach to studying the development of odor discrimination abilities by utilizing odor enantiomersâpairs of odorous molecules of identical chemical and physical features, but differing in optical activity. We hypothesized that discrimination of enantiomeric odor pairs in children and adolescents would be less prone to age effects than discrimination of pairs of common odors due to their encoding difficulty and their limited exposure in common olfactory experience. We examined olfactory discrimination abilities in children aged 4â12 years with regard to three common odor pairs and five enantiomeric odor pairs. The study protocol eliminated verbal and cognitive development bias, resulting in diminished age advantage of the older children in discrimination of enantiomers as compared to common odors.
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