Givaudan-Roure Lecture - Association for Chemoreception Sciences

162 Poster [ ] Environment and Human Olfaction
HUMAN OLFACTORY DETECTIONS OF SOCIAL AND NON-
SOCIAL CHEMOSIGNALS
Miller L. 1, Nomura M. 1, Umeh Y. 1, Villarreal R. 1, Chen D. 2
1Psychology Department, Rice University, Houston, TX; 2Rice
University, Houston, TX
Olfaction is important for the survival of many animals and used for
detection of a wide range of social and nonsocial information. Research
in animals (Petrulis, et al., 1999) suggests that the mechanisms involved
in processing smells serving different functions (e.g., food vs.
reproduction) may be different. Previous research shows that humans
can recognize individuals, distinguish between emotional states (Chen
& Haviland-Jones, 2000; Chen & McClintock, in preparation), and
make fine discriminations between various nonsocial smells, although
few has examined olfactory sensitivities to different types of social and
nonsocial smells within the same study. In this study, we investigate
and compare human olfactory sensitivities to a variety of social and
nonsocial chemosignals. Thirty-two college-aged adults were asked to
identify themselves, their roommate, and to distinguish between
different emotional states based on the smell of sweat. Their
sensitivities to nonsocial smells were also assessed using established
clinical tests (threshold and odor identification tests). Over three-fourths
of the subjects identified themselves in a well-controlled three-itemforced-choice
task (chance = 33%, p