Smelling via the mouth: Effect of aging

Abstract

A group of 20 elderly subjects (67-83 years old) and a group of 20 young subjects (18-24 years old) made magnitude estimations of NaCl and ethyl butyrate solutions, orally sampled, first with the nose unpinched, then with the nose pinched shut to prevent the airborne (volatile) molecules from reaching the olfactory receptors via the nasopharynx. In the concentrations studied, ethyl butyrate had weak taste, strong odor. On the basis of earlier work, which has shown widespread age-related hyposmia, it was hypothesized that pinching the nose would lower the perceived intensity of ethyl butyrate more in young than in old subjects. In order to discount individual inclinations to use large or small numbers, the NaCl estimations were used to normalize the ethyl butyrate estimations. It then became clear that the average young subject perceived the overall intensity of ethyl butyrate solutions to be much stronger with the nose unpinched; for the elderly, in contrast, it made little difference whether the nose was pinched or unpinched. Olfactory losses inferred in this study are of comparable magnitude to those measured in earlier studies, in which the odorants were sniffed via the nostrils. © 1986 Psychonomic Society, Inc.