Presentation Details
| From roses to rubbish: toward a standardized children’s lexicon of odor sources Marta Rokosz1, Daniel Marek1, Tim L.Jesgarzewsky2, Daniel Jędrzejczyk3, Ilona Croy2, Anna Oleszkiewicz1, 4. 1Institute of Psychology, University of Wroclaw, Wrocław, Poland.2Department for Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany.3Institute of Psychology, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanitie, Wrocław, Poland.4Smell and Taste Clinic, Department of Otorhinoloaryngology, Techniche Universitat Dresden, Dresden, Germany |
Abstract
The odors listed spontaneously by adults can be categorized into food & drink, nature, civilization, and social relationships areas, reflecting culturally shared semantic structures and learned environmental regularities. Adult olfactory representations are shaped by experience, language, and functional relevance. Yet, it is still unclear how children describe their olfactory surroundings and whether they categorize them similarly to adults. To this end, we performed a qualitative analysis on the odor sources that are listed by children in a free listing task. A total of 151 children aged 3-9 years (Mage=6.52±1.19 years; 74 girls) participated in the study. Children named as many odors as possible from their daily environment without time constraints. Responses were standardized using a lemmatization approach, performed independently by two experts, followed by a consensus discussion. Resulting lemmas were categorized according to odor sources, contextual references, and affective descriptors. The final dataset comprised 404 odor sources. The most frequently mentioned were flower (n=64), followed by food (n=42), tree (n=39), and leaf (n=32). In addition, 153 distinct contextual references were identified, with the most frequent being forest (n=26), kitchen (n=13), kindergarten (n=11), and wet (n=11). Children also listed 26 unique descriptors, including fresh (n=13), smelly (n=5), nice (n=4), old (n=4), and sweaty (n=4). These findings indicate that children’s spontaneous representations of odors are grounded in concrete, everyday environmental and food-related sources, reflecting primary functions of olfaction. The results provide a structured lexical foundation for understanding early olfactory representations and may inform the development of age-appropriate odor identification and naming tools.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.
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