Olfactory sensitivity can be evaluated by various tests, with “Sniffin’ Sticks” test (SST) being one of the most popular. SST consists of tests for odor threshold, discrimination, and identification. It seems relatively straightforward to administer threshold tests in different groups and societies and it has been shown that odor identification tests requires special adaptation before they can be administered to various populations. However, few studies have investigated the application of an odor discrimination task in various regions/cultures. In the present study, we compared the discrimination scores of 169 Polish people with the scores of 99 Tsimane’, Bolivian Amerindians. The Tsimane’ participants scored very low in the discrimination task, despite their general high olfactory sensitivity. This result suggests that when a discrimination task is chosen as the form of olfactory testing, some additional variables need to be controlled. We suggest three sources of low scores of our participants—their cognitive profile, the cultural background, i.e., little knowledge of the odors used in the discrimination test and problems associated with testing environment.

中文翻译：

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气味辨别测试的跨文化管理。

嗅觉敏感性可以通过各种测试进行评估，“Sniffin' Sticks”测试 (SST) 是最受欢迎的测试之一。SST 包括气味阈值、辨别和识别测试。在不同的群体和社会中进行阈值测试似乎相对简单，并且已经表明气味识别测试需要特殊的适应才能应用于不同的人群。然而，很少有研究调查气味辨别任务在不同地区/文化中的应用。在本研究中，我们将 169 名波兰人的歧视分数与 99 名玻利维亚美洲印第安人的歧视分数进行了比较。尽管 Tsimane 的参与者普遍嗅觉敏感，但他们在辨别任务中的得分非常低。This result suggests that when a discrimination task is chosen as the form of olfactory testing, some additional variables need to be controlled. 我们建议参与者低分的三个来源——他们的认知概况、文化背景，即对辨别测试中使用的气味知之甚少，以及与测试环境相关的问题。