Abstract
Diversity in children's everyday olfactory environment may afect the development of their olfactory abilities and odor awareness. To test this, we collected data on olfactory abilities using the Snifn' Sticks and odor awareness with Children's Olfactory Behaviors in Everyday Life Questionnaire in 153 preschool children and retested them one and a half year later.
Parents completed an inventory on children's exposure to a variety of odors and on their own odor awareness using the Odor Awareness Scale. We controlled for the efects of age and verbal fuency on the children's performance.
We found that the children's odor identifcation and discrimination scores difered as a function of parental odor awareness. Although these efects were rather small, they were commensurate in size with those of gender and age.
To the best of our knowledge, this study is the frst to present evidence that diversity in children's olfactory environment afects variation in their olfactory abilities and odor awareness. We suggest that future studies consider the long-term impact of perceptual learning out of the laboratory and its consequences for olfactory development.