How well can young adults and children discriminate between odors?

Abstract

It is widely believed that people can distinguish between many odors although there is limited empirical evidence. Odor discrimination tasks are employed much less often than other measures of olfaction, but, interestingly, performance is typically ~ 75% correct. This less-than-perfect performance is rarely highlighted, although it suggests that people may not be as good at discriminating odors as is commonly believed. Odor discrimination is understudied in children, and although available evidence suggests that it improves with age, children perform better when the task is simpler. In the present study we explored odor discrimination in children and young adults with a relatively simple same-different task using common and uncommon odors. We found that children perform as well as adults, but that overall performance was less than perfect and depended on the odors to be discriminated. We found evidence that ability to discriminate between odors improves as the difference in pleasantness of the odors increases. In a second experiment, we tested this directly by exploring whether odors that differ in pleasantness and edibility, two dimensions that appear to be important in olfactory perception, are easier to discriminate than odors that are the same on those dimensions. We found further evidence that odors that differ in pleasantness are easier to discriminate.