Individual Variability in the Awareness of Odors: Demographic Parameters and Odor Identification Ability

Abstract

Human chemosensation can be strongly influenced by how much attention people pay to chemosensory stimuli (e.g., Marks and Wheeler in Chem Senses 23:19-29, 1998; Prescott et al. in Chem Senses 29:331-340, 2004). In a recent study, a scale has been devised (i.e., the Odor Awareness Scale; OAS; see Smeets et al. in Chem Senses 33:725-734, 2008) to investigate the level of awareness people have of the available odorants in the environment. Here, we explored whether a variant (Italian version) of the OAS could be used to discriminate between different groups of participants in terms of olfactory abilities (i.e., performance in an odor identification task) and/or personal/demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, age, etc.). Ninety-eight participants underwent this study that was composed of a personal detail questionnaire, the OAS, and a deep investigation of odor identification ability based on a large variety of odor stimuli. During 6 testing sessions, a total of 72 odor stimuli were evaluated: 36 aromas in vapor phase presented in vials and 36 chemical compounds in hydroalcoholic solutions. The results did not indicate any relationships between the participants' declared awareness of odors and the real performance in the identification test. However, differences in the awareness of odors were found as a function of a number of personal factors such as, for example, gender (with females showing higher scores than males) or age (with younger collecting lower scores than older participants). In conclusion, we could not predict from modified OAS scores the participants' specific ability to identify odors. Nevertheless, we could extend the scale's characterization by highlighting different connections between OAS scores and individual parameters.

Food neophobia and its relation with olfactory ability in common odour identification

“…The correction for multiple comparisons prevent us to make any strong claims about the effect of gender in OIP, nevertheless the trend of the effects allows us to suggest an advantage for women over men. This would be in accordance with previous studies conducted in our laboratory (see Demattè et al, 2011) and with what has been previously and extensively described in the literature (for review, see Good & Kopala, 2006). No other factor (like age or smoking habits) revealed to exert a significant modulation neither of OIP nor of neophobic attitudes.…”

“…Additionally, results were also analysed as a function of a number of different demographic parameters (e.g., age, gender, etc.) as previous research demonstrated their relation with chemosensory awareness and performance (Demattè et al, 2011).…”

“…Odour Identification Performance (OIP, expressed in percentage) was computed by considering the proportion between the overall number of correct responses and the total number of responses collected, thus avoiding any possible problems related to missing values (cf. Demattè et al, 2011). OIP was also used as a factor of interest to classify the participants in high and low performers (by using the median value as the cut-off point).…”

“…Instructions presentation and data collection were entirely computerised and managed by FIZZ software (Biosystèmes, Couternon, France). The glass vials were arranged in plastic racks that kept them standing in the correct order (for further details, see Demattè et al, 2011) and were presented in a balanced order to each participant.…”

“…In the questionnaire, participants express on a response scale the degree of agreement with a series of positive and negative statements about their general attitude toward novel food. In the present study a nine-point scale (ranging from 1 = totally disagree to 9 = totally agree) rather than the original seven-point scale was used, in order to be consistent with other questionnaires usually used in the laboratory (see Demattè et al, 2011;cf. Meiselman et al, 2010; see also Cook & Beckman, 2009).…”