Age-related associations of selected odours - what differences exist between language regions and different age-groups in Switzerland? : sub study of the international study : smells like teen spirit II

Switzerland is known as a multicultural country with several official national languages. Due to this background it is to be expected that there exist differences regarding the olfactory perception between the language regions. In the context of the international odour study "Smells like teen spirit II", initiated by the Sensory Network Austria (SNÖ) – the Swiss Sensory Science Society (IG Sensorik) examined three language regions, the German-speaking cantons, the French-speaking cantons and the Italian speaking canton in relation to the perception of nine selected odours (vanilla, orange, lemon, mint, coconut, basil, rose, anis, hay). The aim was to investigate whether there are differences in odour associations to an age category (children, adolescents, adults, seniors) (i) in the different language regions and (ii) whether there are differences in attribution between five different age groups of participants (60 years). A total of 553 persons took part in this study during winter 2019. The participants rated, in an on-site-test, sequential-monadically nine different odours (aromas provided by Symrise) in terms of association with the four different age categories, acceptance and familiarity. Across Switzerland, age-related associations were confirmed in six out of the nine odours. Over all regions vanilla odour was assigned to children. The odours orange, lemon, rose, mint and basil were associated with the adults. The hypothesis that there are regional differences in age category assignment could not be confirmed. Only half of the odours (vanilla, orange, coconut, basil, rose) showed significant differences between the regions. On the other hand, there were differences within age groups. Especially the under-21s assigned a lot of the odours to a different age category than the older age groups