Research Center for Child Mental Development, Kanazawa University, 13-1, Takaramachi, Kanazawa, Ishikawa, 920-8640, Japan.
Department of Psychosocial Medicine, National Center for Child Health and Development, Tokyo, Japan.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2018 Jul;48(7):2590-2592. doi: 10.1007/s10803-018-3511-3.
Understanding the nature of olfactory abnormalities is crucial for optimal interventions in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, previous studies that have investigated odor identification in children with ASD have produced inconsistent results. The ability to correctly identify an odor relies heavily on visual inputs in the general population. We tested odor identification in eight children with ASD and eight age-matched children with typical development (TD). After confirming that all children were able to identify each odor without visual input, we measured odor identification under the visual-distractor condition. Odor identification was hindered by visual distractors for all children with ASD but was not affected in all children with TD. Our results improve understanding of odor identification in ASD.
了解嗅觉异常的性质对于自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童的最佳干预至关重要。然而，之前研究儿童 ASD 嗅觉识别的研究结果并不一致。在普通人群中，正确识别气味的能力严重依赖于视觉输入。我们测试了 8 名 ASD 儿童和 8 名年龄匹配的典型发育儿童（TD）的嗅觉识别能力。在确认所有儿童在没有视觉输入的情况下都能够识别每种气味后，我们在视觉干扰条件下测量了嗅觉识别能力。视觉干扰会阻碍所有 ASD 儿童的嗅觉识别，但不会影响所有 TD 儿童的嗅觉识别。我们的研究结果提高了对 ASD 嗅觉识别的理解。
