http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/science/reactions-to-smell-may-help-diagnose-autism.html
Interesting research.
Basically they got diagnosed autistic children and neurotypical children, sat them down to play video games, and then watched to see their sniffing behavior when pleasant or unpleasant smells were introduced.
Normally, people will stop sniffing a bad smell quickly.
They say it looks like autistic children have a slower response time when sniffing bad smells.
It also sounds like the duration they are talking about is too short for a casual observer to diagnose their own child.
But i still think we should call this the fartsniffer test.
Quote:
It may be possible to diagnose autism by giving children a sniff test, a new study suggests.
Most people instinctively take a big whiff when they encounter a pleasant smell and limit their breathing when they encounter a foul smell.
Children with autism spectrum disorder don’t make this natural adjustment, said Liron Rozenkrantz, a neuroscientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and one of the researchers involved with the study.
She and her colleagues report their findings in the journal Current Biology.
They presented 18 children who had an autism diagnosis and 18 typically developing children with pleasant and unpleasant odors and measured their sniff responses. The pleasant smells were rose and soap, and the unpleasant smells were sour milk and rotten fish.
Typically developing children adjusted their sniffing almost immediately — within about 305 milliseconds. Children with autism did not respond as rapidly. As they were exposed to the smells, the children were watching a cartoon or playing a video game.
“It’s a semi-automated response,” Ms. Rozenkrantz said. “It does not require the subject’s attention.”
Using the sniff test alone, the researchers, who had not been told which children had autism, were able to correctly identify those with autism 81 percent of the time.
They also found that the farther removed an autistic child’s sniff response was from the average for typically developing children, the more severe the child’s social impairments were.
“We hope that it can be used as a diagnostic marker to diagnose autism at a very young age,” Ms. Rozenkrantz said. “This is a nonverbal measure, and it only requires breathing.”
First, though, Ms. Rozenkrantz said more long-term follow-up studies need to be done with young children.
02 Jul 2015, 8:57 pm
I can imagine a parent saying "My child is in the process of being tested for autism. She's been given a number of tests. Today she goes in for her Fartsniffer Test!"
