Attitudes Toward Everyday Odors for Children with Visual Impairments: A Pilot Study (Research Report) (Report‪)‬

The question of how the processing of stimuli from the external world is organized or reorganized when a sensory modality is altered or missing has been the subject of numerous studies, although the studies have mostly been on tactile and auditory abilities (Hatwell, 2003). In contrast, olfaction has been poorly investigated in people who are visually impaired, despite the increasing evidence that humans have a keen sense of smell (Schaal & Porter, 1991). Odors influence mood; well-being (Ehrlichman & Bastone, 1992); and social interactions, such as the choice of partners (Herz & Inzlicht, 2002). Emotional and social implications of odors go back to the earliest periods of development (Schaal, 1988). Olfaction should thus be considered a significant source of environmental information and emotions in persons with visual impairments. Most, if not all, studies of the relationship between olfaction and blindness aimed to test the intuitive hypothesis of increased sensitivity of the unimpaired senses (for a review, see Ferdenzi, Holley, & Schaal, 2004). The comparison of olfactory detection thresholds in participants with and without visual impairments first led to inconsistent results (Boccuzzi, 1962; Griesbach, 1899). More recent studies that have used more reliable methods found no difference between the two groups in olfactory sensitivity, discrimination, or cued identification (that is, the choice of the name of an odor from among several alternatives) (Diekmann, Walger, & von-Wedel, 1994; Schwenn, Hundorf, Moll, Pitz, & Mann, 2002; Smith, Doty, Burlingame, & McKeown, 1993).