Do Visually Impaired People Develop Superior Smell Ability?

Autor(en)

Dorota Majchrzak, Julia Eberhard, Barbara Kalaus, Karl-Heinz Wagner

Abstrakt

It is well known that visually impaired people perform better in orientation by sound than sighted individuals, but it is not clear whether this enhanced awareness also extends to other senses. Therefore, the aim of this study was to observe whether visually impaired subjects develop superior abilities in olfactory perception to compensate for their lack of vision. We investigated the odor perception of visually impaired individuals aged 7 to 89 (n=99; 52 women, 47 men) and compared them with subjects of a control group aged 8 to 82 years (n=100; 45 women, 55 men) without any visual impairment. The participants were evaluated by Sniffin’ Sticks odor identification and discrimination test. Identification ability was assessed for 16 common odors presented in felt-tip pens. In the odor discrimination task, subjects had to determine which of three pens in 16 triplets had a different odor. The median number of correctly identified odorant pens in both groups was the same, 13 of the offered 16. In the discrimination test, there was also no significant difference observed. Gender did not influence results. Age-related changes were observed in both groups with olfactory perception decreasing after the age of 51. We could not confirm that visually impaired people were better in smell identification and discrimination ability than sighted individuals.

Organisation(en)

Department für Ernährungswissenschaften

Journal

Perception

Band

46

Seiten

1171-1182

Anzahl der Seiten

12

ISSN

0301-0066

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/0301006617717942

Publikationsdatum

2017

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

303009 Ernährungswissenschaften

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Neuroscience(all)

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/do-visually-impaired-people-develop-superior-smell-ability(b2999387-9003-426d-a2d9-759d91c55d2a).html