Abstract
Introduction
Temperament affects olfaction in cross-sectional studies. However, it is not clear whether it is linked to olfactory development. Here we examined the links between temperament and olfaction over a nearly 2-year period, expecting that children showing higher levels of negative affectivity would exhibit greater odor awareness across repeated testing. As a subsidiary aim, we investigated whether olfactory scores differ as a function of olfactory performance at a younger age.
Methods
The participants were 73 Czech children (mean age = 5.8 years). Their olfactory abilities were assessed using the Sniffin’ Sticks, and odor awareness was evaluated with the Children’s Olfactory Behaviors in Everyday Life Questionnaire. These were reassessed 21 months later. Mothers provided information on the children’s temperament by completing the Short Form of the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire at the same interval.
Results
Children’s temperament was not found to relate to olfactory development over a 21-month period. Odor identification and awareness, but not odor discrimination and threshold, differed as a function of scores achieved at an earlier age.
Conclusions
Odor identification and awareness predict themselves over a 21-month period. Links between temperament and olfaction may be only beginning to form at preschool age.
Implications
While this study suggests that temperament does not play a role in olfactory development, longitudinal studies over a broader timespan are needed to determine the robustness of this finding.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to the children and their parents for their participation, as well as the principals and teachers for allowing us to perform the study on the kindergarten and school premises. A special word of thanks goes to Markéta Sobotková for her help with data collection and Lydie Kubicová for helping us in maintaining the participant database and inviting parents and their children to participate in the second round of data collection.
Funding
This study is a result of research funded by the project LO1611 with financial support from the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports (MEYS) under the NPU I program. LMN was supported by the PROGRES program Q22 at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University (FHS UK), within the Institutional Support for Long-Term Development of Research Organizations from MEYS, and the Specific Academic Research project (SVV) 2017 number 260469 realized at FHS UK. LMN was further supported by the Czech Science Foundation (17-14534S). LMN, JF, and JH were supported by the project UNCE 025.
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All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008 (5). The study has been approved by the IRB of Faculty of Science, Charles University.
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Written informed consent was obtained from the children’s parents and oral informed consent was provided by the children in the presence of a teacher employed by the school.
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Martinec Nováková, L., Fialová, J. & Havlíček, J. Development of Children’s Olfactory Abilities and Odor Awareness Is Not Predicted by Temperament: a Longitudinal Study. Chem. Percept. 11, 59–71 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12078-017-9240-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12078-017-9240-8