When preschoolers follow their eyes and older children follow their noses: visuo‐olfactory social affective matching in childhood

Abstract

Recognition of emotional facial expressions is a crucial skill for adaptive behavior that most often occurs in a multi-sensory context. Affective matching tasks have been used across development to investigate how people integrate facial information with other senses. Given the relative affective strength of olfaction and its relevance in mediating social information since birth, we assessed olfactory-visual matching abilities in a group of 140 children between the ages of 3 and 11 years old. We presented one of three odor primes (rose, fish and no-odor, rated as pleasant or unpleasant by individual children) before a facial choice task (happy vs. disgusted face). Children were instructed to select one of two faces. As expected, children of all ages tended to choose happy faces. Children younger than 5 years of age were biased towards choosing the happy face, irrespective of the odor smelled. After age 5, an affective matching strategy guided children's choices. Smelling a pleasant odor predicted the choice of happy faces, whereas smelling the unpleasant or fish odor predicted the choice of disgusted faces. The present study fills a gap in the developmental literature on olfactory-visual affective strategies that affect decision-making, and represents an important step towards understanding the underlying developmental processes that shape the typical social mind.

Exploring Social Biomarkers in High-Functioning Adults with Autism and Asperger’s Versus Healthy Controls: A Cross-Sectional Analysis

“…Our findings are not surprising, as olfaction has been established as a critical element in affective matching after the age of 5 years in typically developing children (Cavazzana et al 2016 ). It plays a key role in bonding (Bowlby 1980 ; Sullivan et al 2011 ; Wedekind and Penn 2000 ) and highly influences interpersonal relationships (Huttenbrink et al 2013 ).…”

Science interrupted

“…Participants provided their answers using a visual analogue scale (VAS) anchored to a happy and to a sad face. Children offer more reliable responses on this answer format (Cavazzana et al, 2018; Mellor & Moore, 2014).…”

“…This is particularly true for olfaction in relation to affective states (Doty et al, 1995). As Yeshurun and Sobel (2010) claim, the main dimension of the olfactory space-pleasantness-is affective in nature, and children as young as five are able to report on this olfactory dimension (Cavazzana et al, 2018). Specifically for disgust, adults can almost invariably evoke disgust via the olfactory channel, particularly for objects that carry microbial threat (Croy et al, 2011), and disgusting odors elicit stronger physiological reactions than their visual counterparts (Adolph & Pause, 2012).…”

“…1 to a happy and to a sad face. Children offer more reliable responses on this answer format (Cavazzana et al, 2018;Mellor & Moore, 2014).…”

“…We sought to broaden scholars’ measurement toolkit by adding a sensory measure that captures individual differences in olfactory reactions to potentially disgusting smells along with a behavioral measure. This would help eliminate some social desirability effects that permeate this literature (Banaji et al, 2001), as olfactory reports are accurately reflective of disgust (Adolph & Pause, 2012; Cavazzana et al, 2018; Croy et al, 2011), but they are unlikely to be linked directly to political attitudes in the minds of most people.…”