Fjaeldstad Alexander, Sundbøll Jens, Niklassen Andreas, Ovesen Therese
Flavour Institute, Aarhus University, Noerrebrogade 44, 10G, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford OX3 7JX, Oxford, UK.
Chem Senses. 2017 Mar 1;42(3):239-246. doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjw125.
Olfactory identification abilities in adolescents have been reported inferior compared with adults. Though this seems to be the case when comparing identification abilities using tests validated on-and for-adults, odor familiarity has been hypothesized to affect identification abilities in younger participants. However, this has never been thoroughly tested. The aims of this study were to investigate patterns in odor familiarity differences between adolescents and adults, and to investigate if an adolescent familiarity-based modification of an identification test could lead to similar identification scores in adolescents and adults. In total, 411 adolescent participants and 320 adult participants were included in the study. Odor familiarity ratings were obtained for 125 odors. A modified version of the "Sniffin' Sticks" identification test was created and validated on 72 adolescents based on adolescent familiarity scores. This test was applied to 82 normosmic adults and 167 normosmic adolescents. Results show a lower familiarity for spices and environmental odors, and a higher familiarity for candy odors in adolescents. The identification abilities in adults and adolescents were equal after familiarity-based modification. We conclude that changes in odor familiarity from adolescence to adulthood do not develop evenly for all odors, but are dependent on odor-object category.
据报道，青少年的嗅觉识别能力比成年人差。虽然使用经过成年人验证的测试来比较识别能力时似乎确实如此，但有假设认为气味熟悉度会影响年轻参与者的识别能力。然而，这从未得到过全面测试。本研究的目的是调查青少年和成年人在气味熟悉度差异方面的模式，并研究基于青少年熟悉度对识别测试进行修改是否能使青少年和成年人的识别分数相似。该研究共纳入了411名青少年参与者和320名成年参与者。对125种气味进行了气味熟悉度评分。基于青少年的熟悉度得分，创建了“嗅觉棒”识别测试的修改版本，并在72名青少年中进行了验证。该测试应用于82名嗅觉正常的成年人和167名嗅觉正常的青少年。结果显示，青少年对香料和环境气味的熟悉度较低，对糖果气味的熟悉度较高。基于熟悉度进行修改后，成年人和青少年的识别能力相当。我们得出结论，从青少年到成年，气味熟悉度的变化并非对所有气味都是均匀发展的，而是取决于气味对象类别。
