Odor Identification: Influences of Age, Gender, Cognition, and Personality

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the influences of age, gender, cognitive abilities, and personality styles on odor identification. Participants (N = 532) aged 45-87 years from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging were assessed with a Swedish version of the National Geographic Smell Survey. Both detection and identification of olfactory information were impaired with age. Gender had no effect on detection or identification. Hierarchical regressions revealed that proficiency in semantic memory, intensity perception, and personality style (i.e., neuroticism, impulsivity, and lack of assertiveness) were potent predictors for successful odor identification, even when individual variations in chronological age, sex, education, and global cognitive functioning were taken into account.

Olfactory Function: The Influence of Demographic, Cognitive, and Genetic factors

“…Func-tional brain imaging data and structural volumetric data support the notion of olfactory threshold detection as a primarily sensory driven task (Frasnelli et al, 2010;Savic, Gulyas, Larsson, & Roland, 2000;Seubert, Freiherr, Frasnelli, Hummel, & Lundström, 2012). Larsson et al (2000) found no influence of cognitive factors in an odor detection task. However, hypothetically, the assessment of olfactory thresholds may tap discrimination abilities since the subject needs to detect the difference between a target and a blank.…”

“…The female superiority is prevalent in both free identification (Cain, 1982;Doty, Applebaum, Zusho, & Settle, 1985;Wysocki & Gilbert, 1989;Öberg, et al, 2002), and cued identification tasks (Larsson, Nilsson, Olofsson, & Nordin, 2004;Segal et al, 1995). However, it is worth noting that other studies have failed to find a significant influence of sex in odor identification tasks (Kobal et al, 2000;Larsson, Finkel, & Pedersen, 2000). Some research reports that the sex effect may vary as a function of age, such that the female superiority is more pronounced in older as compared to younger individuals (Ship, Pearson, Cruise, Brant, & Metter, 1996).…”

“…Both odor familiarity and odor naming (i.e., odor identification) depend on prior knowledge of an odor (i.e., semantic memory) (Finkel, Pedersen, & Larsson, 2001;Larsson et al, 2000). In a familiarity task the subjects are usually instructed to rate the perceived familiarity (from high to low) of a given odor.…”

Olfaction-enhanced multimedia: perspectives and challenges

“…Other research studies suggest that our sense of smell peaks when we are in our twenties [90,20,23]. On the other hand, research studies [20,35,90,22,34,39,45,121] have shown that the human olfactory sense declines with age and it is generally thought that this decline starts to become noticeable at about the age of seventy [20,22,77]. …”

“…However, there are also a number of studies which report that there is no significant difference in odour detection and identification between the genders [39,45,79]. It is thought that a number of these studies that report on differences across the genders have not taken into consideration that odour sensitivity in females is more acute at different stages of the female cycle [23,110,48,86], but there are also studies that contradict this thought [33].…”