Performance of Early-Blind and Sighted Children on Olfactory Tasks

The goal of the study was to test whether children with congenital or early-onset blindness outperform sighted children on olfactory tasks. Measures of olfactory sensitivity, odour recognition, and odour labeling were obtained. The results show that the blind children were more proficient at correctly labeling 25 common odours than were matched sighted children. However, the blind were not more sensitive to a target odour, nor more proficient at choosing a correct odour label from a list of four. Together, the data point to a circumscribed advantage of blind children at self-generating and retrieving odour labels and, as such, to a limited, but still compensatory, cognitive function.