Measures of Olfaction During Pregnancy — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

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Student presentations must have a faculty sponsor.

Abstracts must include a title and a description of the research, scholarship, or creative work. The description should be 150-225 words in length and constructed in a format or style appropriate for the presenter’s discipline.

The following points should be addressed within the selected format or style for the abstract:

A clear statement of the problem or question you pursued, or the scholarly goal or creative theme achieved in your work.
A brief comment about the significance or uniqueness of the work.
A clear description of the methods used to achieve the purpose or goals for the work.
A statement of the conclusions, results, outcomes, or recommendations, or if the work is still in progress, the results you expect to report at the event.

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Additional Information

More information is available at carthage.edu/celebration-scholars/. The following are members of the Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Committee who are eager to listen to ideas and answer questions:

Jun Wang
Kim Instenes
John Kirk
Nora Nickels
Andrew Pustina
James Ripley

Measures of Olfaction During Pregnancy

Name: Eunice Mwonya
Major: Psychology
Hometown: Pendleton, IN
Faculty Sponsor: Leslie Cameron
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: SURE
Funding: SURE

Abstract

Measures of Olfaction During Pregnancy

It is commonly believed that women experience a heightened sense of smell during pregnancy. Profet (1992) argued that a heightened sense of smell during pregnancy would discourage women from ingesting possible toxins and dangerous substances. Previous research has also shown no difference in odor sensitivity between pregnant and non-pregnant women (Cameron 2007) and little difference in sensitivity across trimester (Ochsenbein-Kölble, von Mering, Zimmermann, & Hummel, 2007). One study observed that pregnant women’s ability to identify some odors was superior to non-pregnant women, better but overall ability was not better (Cameron, 2007). This study aimed to explore thresholds and suprathreshold sensitivity to food odors during pregnancy, as well as memory for odors, which has not been studied previously. In the current study, 11 pregnant and 15 non-pregnant women completed two olfactory threshold tasks, two suprathreshold rating tasks and two odor memory tasks. The stimuli were both food and non-food odors. The results of this study showed no difference between pregnant and non pregnant women on threshold, suprathreshold or memory tasks. This study did not provide evidence for a heightened sense of smell during pregnancy. Future directions for this study could compare pregnant women by trimester.

Poster file