Do you smell?

[Quintessence]

No, I'm not talking about your personal body odor; this thread is about olfaction processes in humans. Smell is perhaps the least appreciated of the senses, and it's a common belief that humans are rubbish at it. But are we really? According to a fascinating new study by Majid and Kruspe:

People struggle to name odors. This has been attributed to a diminution of olfaction in trade-off to vision. This presumption has been challenged recently by data from the hunter-gatherer Jahai who, unlike English speakers, find odors as easy to name as colors. Is the superior olfactory performance among the Jahai because of their ecology (tropical rainforest), their language family (Aslian), or because of their subsistence (they are hunter-gatherers)? We provide novel evidence from the hunter-gatherer Semaq Beri and the non-hunter-gatherer (swidden-horticulturalist) Semelai that subsistence is the critical factor. Semaq Beri and Semelai speakers—who speak closely related languages and live in the tropical rainforest of the Malay Peninsula—took part in a controlled odor- and color-naming experiment. The swidden-horticulturalist Semelai found odors much more difficult to name than colors, replicating the typical Western finding. But for the hunter-gatherer Semaq Beri odor naming was as easy as color naming, suggesting that hunter-gatherer olfactory cognition is special.
From - http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)31616-0​

This is an open access journal, so everyone can read the article in full. I now officially feel deprived that I grew up in a culture that didn't hone my nose. Who would have thought that olfaction has a cultural dimension? Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised - the words that we use to describe the world directly impact how we think about the world and relate to the world.

Your thoughts? Or should I say... your smells?

 

[Twilight Hue]

Can you smell that smell? *grin*

 

[Revoltingest]

Smelling is a skill which can improve with training & usage.

 

[Sunstone]

Fascinating, Quintesence! Thanks for sharing that!

For some reason the article puts me in mind of something I've observed, and which some friends of mine have also observed. Namely, if one spends a period of time (say two to four weeks) up in the mountains away from contact with civilization, then when one returns to the city, one's senses are apt to be overloaded. The lights are too bright, the smells are too strong, etc. Sights, sounds, and smells one hardly noticed before leap out at you.

 

[Brickjectivity]

No, I'm not talking about your personal body odor; this thread is about olfaction processes in humans. Smell is perhaps the least appreciated of the senses, and it's a common belief that humans are rubbish at it. But are we really? According to a fascinating new study by Majid and Kruspe:

People struggle to name odors. This has been attributed to a diminution of olfaction in trade-off to vision. This presumption has been challenged recently by data from the hunter-gatherer Jahai who, unlike English speakers, find odors as easy to name as colors. Is the superior olfactory performance among the Jahai because of their ecology (tropical rainforest), their language family (Aslian), or because of their subsistence (they are hunter-gatherers)? We provide novel evidence from the hunter-gatherer Semaq Beri and the non-hunter-gatherer (swidden-horticulturalist) Semelai that subsistence is the critical factor. Semaq Beri and Semelai speakers—who speak closely related languages and live in the tropical rainforest of the Malay Peninsula—took part in a controlled odor- and color-naming experiment. The swidden-horticulturalist Semelai found odors much more difficult to name than colors, replicating the typical Western finding. But for the hunter-gatherer Semaq Beri odor naming was as easy as color naming, suggesting that hunter-gatherer olfactory cognition is special.
From - http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)31616-0​

This is an open access journal, so everyone can read the article in full. I now officially feel deprived that I grew up in a culture that didn't hone my nose. Who would have thought that olfaction has a cultural dimension? Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised - the words that we use to describe the world directly impact how we think about the world and relate to the world.

Your thoughts? Or should I say... your smells?

Do the experiment and control groups speak the same language? Maybe the language helps one over the other?

 

[Orbit]

I can smell this New Mexico "wine" I just opened, and it's vile.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Do you smell?

I'm all messed up. My feet smell and my nose runs. That's just wrong.

a diminution of olfaction

Good word, olfaction.

We probably all know the analogous words for sight and hearing (vision and audition). How about taste and touch?

Spoiler

Taste is gustatation, touch is taction