Humans’ early olfactory perception has been studied mainly within the framework of mother–offspring interactions and only a few studies have focused on newborns’ abilities to discriminate body odors per se. The aim of this study was to develop a method to evaluate olfactory social preferences of infants at term-equivalent age. Twenty dyads of infants (10 born preterm and 10 born at term) at term-equivalent age and their mothers were included. We analyzed the behavioral reactions of infants to their mother's upper-chest odor (that bears social, non-food related information). The two impregnated gauzes and a control gauze were presented to the infants for 10 s each, in a random order. We compared two durations of gauze impregnation: 30 min and 12 h. This study reveals that mothers’ upper chest emits sufficient olfactory information to induce reactions in infants born full-term or born preterm and that a short impregnation is preferable to evaluate their perception of body odors, notably for those born preterm.

中文翻译：

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一种新颖，简短且易于执行的方法，用于评估新生儿的社会嗅觉偏好。

人们对早期嗅觉的研究主要是在母子互动的框架内进行的，只有很少的研究集中在新生儿辨别体味本身的能力上。这项研究的目的是开发一种方法来评估足月等效年龄婴儿的嗅觉社会偏好。包括足月当量年龄的20个双胞胎婴儿（10个早产儿和10个足月儿）及其母亲。我们分析了婴儿对其母亲的上胸异味（具有社会性，非食品相关信息）的行为反应。将两个浸渍纱布和一个对照纱布按随机顺序分别送给婴儿10 s。我们比较了纱布浸渍的两个持续时间：30分钟和12小时。