Inspiration at the Odeuropa’s Smell Culture Fair for our olfactory reading studies in Stavanger
On November 28, 2023, I was privileged to attend the Odeuropa Smell Culture Fair in Amsterdam, following the invitation of the Odeuropa project team. It was the first time I attended a conference with a multidisciplinary focus completely centred on smell. There were perfumers in the room, olfactory experts, and researchers, all talking about smell from their respective perspectives and approaches. It was an inspiring event that motivated me on several grounds.
For those who are not familiar with Odeuropa, it is a European research project that brings together knowledge in sensory mining and olfactory heritage. The team has made significant strides in thoughtfully exploring our sense of smell, highlighting the importance of our scent heritage as a valuable avenue for connecting and promoting Europe's tangible and intangible cultural legacy. I was aware of the project prior to the Smell Fair in November but didn't initially see a direct connection to my work. My focus revolves around the present smells, delving into children's everyday experiences with smell, and the future, involving the development of digital olfactory prototypes that incorporate scents into children's stories. As a professor in children’s development and reading, I am interested in olfaction as a tool to foster children’s learning and engagement with stories.
At the Smell Culture Fair, I was excited about the opportunity to present our research poster, based on a study conducted in collaboration with Dr. Bruheim Jensen from the University of Stavanger. The study focused on observing parents and children reading scratch and sniff books at home. Given the strong links between olfaction, emotion, and memory, Dr Bruheim Jensen and I hypothesized that smell could play a particularly beneficial role in parent-child reading interactions. Up until now, olfaction has been relatively unexplored in the context of reading. Our study represents the first in-depth exploration of what happens when parents and children read olfactory books, such as scratch and sniff, together.
In Western cultures, shared book reading is regarded as an integral aspect of everyday family life and is advocated as a quintessential activity for parents to enhance their children's learning, particularly in language and socio-emotional skills. In our study, we were intrigued by how engaging with scratch and sniff books could play a role in these processes.
Scratch-and-sniff books feature pages with specific areas treated with a fragrant coating. When these areas are scratched, the corresponding scent is released. For our study, we chose the scratch-and-sniff book titled "Peter Follows His Nose." The narrative revolves around Peter, a rabbit, who navigates his surroundings by sniffing and tasting various foods and herbs like lavender, strawberries, mushrooms, and onions. Each food item is mentioned in the story text and accompanied by an illustrated image. This image is positioned on, or near to, a scratch-and-sniff area beneath a small paper flap. Our goal was to investigate how these olfactory cues might impact shared book reading in Norwegian families at home.
Ten adult-child dyads took part in this study, with eight mothers and one aunt and one father reading with their children aged between three to five years. This was a purposive sample of parents and our findings cannot be generalised to wider populations in that we selected only a small group of participants and all children were typically developing and native Norwegian speakers.
Nevertheless, our findings revealed some interesting patterns. For example, we found that both adults and children participated in three distinct forms of olfactory engagement (sniffing, whiffing, and wafting). They engaged in smelling for relatively extended periods of time, involving repeated scratching and sniffing of the olfactory areas at a fairly brisk pace. The reciprocity in olfactory engagement between adults and children varied, ranging from no attunement (correspondence between each other) to fully contingent responses when the child and adult were aligned in their reading and olfactory behaviour.
Across the dyads, the most intensively engaged senses were touch, vision, and smell. Both adults and children frequently utilized not only their noses but also their fingers, hands, and even their whole heads to explore and smell the book. Regarding embodiment, we also observed that both adults and children commonly engaged in smelling by bringing their noses close to the page. However, some participants chose to smell their hands and fingers instead of directly sniffing the pages. During the sessions, seven mothers and almost all nine children, at some point, placed their heads inside the book to smell the pages. All participants utilized their fingers and fingernails to scratch the scented surface, and three children even used their whole hands. The scratching action typically lasted for not more than five seconds on each scented page.
Given that the nature and style of smelling behaviors varied both between and within families, we highlighted the unique olfactory engagement of each dyad. In our research article, we created olfactory profiles for the families, which can serve as valuable tools for comparative analysis in future studies.
This study is just one study of the broader Sensory Books Project conducted at the University of Stavanger. Financed by the Norwegian Research Council for five years, this project aims to delve into the potential of smell in children's narrative stories. Our aim is to investigate how smells can enhance and transform children's reading and story experiences.
As readers of this blog would know, scents and smells are unique indicators of the environment, and as such, play a significant role in sparking interest, engagement, and memories. Despite their potential, the entire educational system predominantly relies on audio-visual content, neglecting the influence of olfaction in children's learning. The emphasis on olfaction becomes especially crucial in light of the heightened use of antiseptics and sanitation products, as well as the altered sense of smell experienced by those who had COVID-19. Our project thus stands out as the pioneering effort to scrutinize the educational value of olfaction in children's learning, with a specific emphasis on reading and storytelling experiences.
The primary study within the project is taking place in Norway, with a specific focus on 3-5-year-old Norwegian children and their schools and families. In one study (or work package) within the project, data collection follows a participatory research methodology, where researchers actively involve children as co-researchers. Together with their teachers, these young co-researchers explore the role of scents and smells in shaping children’s story experiences. Another facet of the study centers on determining the educational value of smell-enhanced reading, aiming to understand how it can boost children’s reading comprehension and learning of story-related vocabulary.
During my poster presentation of our study with Dr. Bruheim Jensen at the Smell Culture Fair, I received many questions about the broader context of our project and aspirations for the project's culmination in 2025. The poster sparked numerous discussions about the power of smell for children’s education and led to new research connections, and even new co-authored articles that we are currently working on. It is these kinds of connections that can be ignited by conferences and networking. I'm thankful to the Odeuropa organizers for fostering the future of olfactory research and facilitating exciting research collaborations across disciplines and countries.