Verbal cues modulate hedonic perception of odors in 5-year-old children as well as in adults

Mustapha Bensafi (1, 2) , Fanny Rinck (1, 2) , Benoist Schaal (3) , Catherine Rouby (1, 2, 4)

1 Neurosciences Sensorielles Comportement Cognition
2 IFNL - IFR des neurosciences de Lyon
3 CSG - Centre des Sciences du Goût
4 FLAVIC - FLAveur, VIsion et Comportement du consommateur

The judgment of pleasantness/unpleasantness is the prominent reaction to the olfactory world. In human adults, the hedonic valence of odor perception is affected by various factors, among which is an individual's lexical knowledge about smells. The present study examined whether such top-down effects of lexical knowledge on hedonic judgment of olfactory input are similar in children (5–6 years) and adults (20–25 years). In both groups, the lexical knowledge was found to influence the perception of the least emotional (or most neutral) odors: the pleasantness of the smells of banana and mint was enhanced when participants were given the corresponding odor label before olfactory sensation. These results lend support to the notion that, during childhood, smells are not only encoded perceptually but that verbal encoding also steers contextual effects that may be prominent factors in the early memorization and categorization of odors

Mots clés: HEDONIC PROCESSING; EMOTION; OLFACTION; LANGUAGE; CHIDREN

Domaines: Neurosciences

Mustapha Bensafi, Fanny Rinck, Benoist Schaal, Catherine Rouby. Verbal cues modulate hedonic perception of odors in 5-year-old children as well as in adults. Chemical Senses, 2007, 32 (9), pp.855-862. ⟨10.1093/chemse/bjm055⟩. ⟨hal-00169365⟩