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How Scratch-and-Sniff Books Encode Smell Across Development.

Jas Brooks1, Natalia Kucirkova2,3, Charles Spence4

  • 1Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, 2167Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Multisensory Research
|November 15, 2025
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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Scratch-and-sniff books offer multisensory reading experiences, adapting smell content and language for different age groups. These books may help children develop sensory, cognitive, and social skills.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Children's Literature Studies

Background:

  • Scratch-and-sniff books provide multisensory reading experiences, combining olfactory, textual, and visual elements.
  • Despite their popularity since the 1970s, scholarly research on their cognitive and developmental impact is limited.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To analyze the variation in smell content within scratch-and-sniff books based on target age, complexity, and linguistic framing.
  • To investigate the role of olfactory cues in narrative structures supporting inferencing, emotional resonance, and social norm acquisition.

Main Methods:

  • Mixed-methods analysis of 334 scratch-and-sniff books.
  • Quantitative analysis of smell types, labeling strategies, and descriptive complexity.
  • Qualitative reading of narrative structures and olfactory cue integration.

Main Results:

  • Significant differences in smell types and linguistic framing were found based on target readership age.
  • Younger readers' books feature simple, explicit smells, while older readers' books use implicit, humorous, or transgressive scents.
  • Olfactory cues are integrated into narratives to support inferential reasoning and social learning.

Conclusions:

  • Scratch-and-sniff books adapt olfactory content and language to developmental stages, suggesting a role beyond entertainment.
  • Smell in these books may scaffold emerging sensory, cognitive, and social capacities in early reading.
  • These books offer a unique medium for exploring crossmodal mapping and early childhood development.