Temperamental Influences on Children’s Olfactory Performance: the Role of Self-Regulation

A body of research predominantly in young adults has suggested a link between olfactory perception, especially sensitivity, and personality characteristics, particularly neuroticism. Nevertheless, it is not clear whether these associations are present outside this particular age range and whether they involve other olfactory abilities, such as odor identification and discrimination, and temperamental differences in reactivity and self-regulation. On the one hand, extrapolating from studies with adults to children, participants scoring high on negative affectivity, which broadly maps onto neuroticism, should outperform the low-scoring ones. On the other hand, well-developed self-regulatory processes, referred to as effortful control, which modulate the expression of such tendencies, might also contribute to better olfactory performance.

Thus, the aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of the temperamental factors on olfactory performance. Namely, we hypothesized that superior olfactory performance would be delivered by children scoring relatively higher on negative affectivity but also by those perceived as exhibiting greater self-regulation.

Odor identification and discrimination in 143 children (72 boys) aged 6 to 8 years were assessed with the Sniffin‘ Sticks, controlling for verbal fluency. Parents provided reports of their children‘s temperament by means of a short form of the Children‘s Behavior Questionnaire. The potential influence of parental responsiveness and demands on temperamental attributions was controlled for with hypothetical vignettes representing parenting styles.

There was an effect of effortful control (but not negative affectivity) on the total identification (but not discrimination) scores. Namely, children who were perceived as more capable of self-regulation exhibited higher odor identification scores. Girls did not outperform boys on either of the olfactory tests, but they were deemed by their parents to show greater self-regulation.

Our findings indirectly point to the effect of self-regulatory tendencies on odor identification in young children. However, they did not corroborate the idea that children varying in negative affectivity (underlying neuroticism) differ in terms of olfactory performance. Given the narrow age range of children recruited in the present study, further studies with preadolescent and adolescent participants are needed to gain more insight into the nature of these relationships.