Effects of age and cognition on a cross- cultural paediatric adaptation of the sniffin' sticks identification test

Abstract

Objectives: To study the effects of age and cognition on the performance of children aged 3 to 18 years on a culturally adapted version of the 16 itemsmell identification test fromSniffin' Sticks (SS16). Methods: A series of pilots were conducted on 29 children aged 3 to 18 years old and 23 adults to produce an adapted version of the SS16 suitable for Brazilian children (SS16-Child). A final version was applied to 51 children alongside a picture identification test (PIT-SS16-Child) to access cognitive abilities involved in the smell identification task. In addition 20 adults performed the same tasks as a comparison group. Results: The final adapted SS16-Child was applied to 51 children with a mean age of 9.9 years (range 3-18 years, SD=4.25 years), of which 68.3%were girls. There was an independent effect of age (p<0.05) and PIT-SS16-Child (p<0.001) on the performance on the SS16- Child, and older children reached the ceiling for scoring in the cognitive and olfactory test. Pre-school children had difficulties identifying items of the test. Discussion/Conclusions: A cross-culturally adapted version of the SS16 can be used to test olfaction in children but interpretation of the results must take age and cognitive abilities into consideration.