Brief Report: Odour Awareness in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Doi et al. (2020) asked parents of preschool boys to fill out a short smell-awareness checklist. The team compared boys with autism to same-age boys without autism.

They also looked at each child's daily living scores to see if lower smell awareness linked to lower independence.

Boys with autism scored lower on odour awareness than their typical peers. Lower awareness scores went hand-in-hand with lower adaptive behaviour scores.

The gap was small but clear enough to show up in the statistics.

The finding lines up with Legiša et al. (2013). That team saw autistic kids show the same face and body reactions to smells as peers, yet they struggled to name the feeling. Hirokazu adds the parent-view: kids also notice smells less in daily life.

Hrdlicka et al. (2011) came first. They showed autistic kids rated cinnamon and pineapple as less pleasant. Hirokazu widens the lens from "like" to "notice."

Luisier et al. (2019) flipped the coin. They exposed autistic preschoolers to a neutral food smell every week. Most kids later picked the food. Together the papers say: autistic kids may start with lower smell interest, but repeated exposure can still shift choice.

If a child rarely comments on smells, he may also need extra teaching for dressing, toilet use, or tooth-brushing. Pair adaptive-skills training with sensory checks. When you pick edible reinforcers, offer choices more than once; the smell might grow on him.