Odor Perception in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and its Relationship to Food Neophobia

Abstract

Atypical sensory functioning in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has been well documented in the last decade for the visual, tactile and auditory systems, but olfaction in ASD is still understudied. The aim of the present study was to examine whether children with ASD and neuro-typically (NT) developed children differed in odor perception, at the cognitive (familiarity and identification ability), sensorimotor (olfactory exploration) and affective levels (hedonic evaluation). Because an important function of the sense of smell is its involvement in eating, from food selection to appreciation and recognition, a potential link between odor perception and food neophobia was also investigated. To these ends, 10 children between 6 and 13 years old diagnosed with ASD and 10 NT control children were tested. To compare performance, 16 stimuli were used and food neophobia was assessed by the parents on a short food neophobia scale. Results revealed that (i) significant hedonic discrimination between attractive and aversive odors was observed in NT (p = 0.005; d = 2.378) and ASD children (p = 0.042; d = 0.941), and (ii) hedonic discrimination level was negatively correlated with food neophobia scores in ASD (p = 0.007) but not NT children. In conclusion, this study offers new insights into odor perception in ASD children, highlighting a relationship between odor hedonic reactivity and eating behavior. This opens up new perspectives on both (i) the role of olfaction in the construction of eating behavior in ASD children, and (ii) the measurement and meaning of food neophobia in this population.

Feeding behavior and dietary intake of male children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder: A case‐control study

“…In addition, calories from carbohydrates, obtained through food records sustain this result. An important feature showed by ASD patients, which can be a barrier to widening food diversity, is food neophobia or preferring familiar foods (Luisier et al, 2015). Parents reported that almost 45% of ASD patients in our study never try new foods, and nearly 30% just sometimes do it, which corroborate for the limited food repertoire and probably for the subsequent nutrient deficiencies.…”

Perception of odors and tastes in autism spectrum disorders: A systematic review of assessments

“…Studies focused on identification evaluations reported opposite findings with altered identification abilities [Bennetto et al, ; Galle et al, ; Luisier et al, ; May et al, ; Tavassoli & Baron‐Cohen, ] as much as typical identification performances [Brewer et al, ; Dudova et al, ; Galle et al, ]. Regarding discrimination and odor rating, no difference appears in the only study using discrimination assessment [Galle et al, ] and some differences are reported in odor pleasantness in three other studies [Hrdlicka et al, ; Legiša et al, ; Luisier et al, ]. Some of studies have included males and females in their groups but they do not observed the gender‐related performances in the sensory tasks.…”

“…We identified one study performing an odor discrimination test [Zatorre & Jones-Gotman, 1991] where there is no difference between their groups [Galle et al, 2013]. Finally, four studies perform pleasantness assessment giving opposite findings with differences in pleasantness rating of some odors in Hrdlicka et al [2011] and Luisier et al [2015] unlike in Galle et al [2013] and varying results in Legi sa, Messinger, Kermol, and Marlier [2013] with preserved intensity rating but differences appear with some odors that are rated less unpleasant in the HFA group. To our knowledge, few studies have been focusing on psychophysical assessment of gustation in individuals with ASD.…”

Sensory Snack Time: A School-Based Intervention Addressing Food Selectivity in Autistic Children

“…Specifically sensory differences in processing in the proximal domains of touch and smell/taste have been shown to distinguish autism and non-autism groups (Schreck et al, 2004;Schreck and Williams, 2006;Leekam et al, 2007;Tomchek and Dunn, 2007), thereby potentially implicating sensory differences as a cause of food selectivity (Williams et al, 2000;Rastam, 2008;Twachtman-Reilly et al, 2008;Cermak et al, 2010). Indeed, specific contextual factors such as texture, taste, temperature, smell, and consistency of foods, have been reported to be associated with food selectivity (Whiteley et al, 2000;Williams et al, 2000;Schreck et al, 2004;Seiverling et al, 2010Seiverling et al, , 2011Kuschner et al, 2015;Luisier et al, 2015;Postorino et al, 2015). The growing body of evidence supporting the significant relationship between sensory differences and greater food selectivity not only in autistic individuals (Matson and Fodstad, 2009;Cermak et al, 2010;Nadon et al, 2011b;Suarez et al, 2012Suarez et al, , 2014bBeighley et al, 2013;Mazurek et al, 2013;Johnson et al, 2014;Zobel-Lachiusa et al, 2015;Chistol et al, 2018) but also in typically developing children (Farrow and Coulthard, 2012;Johnson et al, 2015;Coulthard et al, 2016) and those with an intellectual disability (Engel-Yeger et al, 2016) should not therefore be surprising.…”