Odor discrimination and task duration in young and older adults

The effect of task duration on odor discrimination in aging was studied. Tw enty-seven young male adults and 24 young female adults between 18 and 30 y ears of age, and 17 older male adults between 45 and 65 years of age comple ted an odor discrimination task. The odor discrimination task consisted of two parts of 16 trials each in which, from three bottles consisting of two identical and one aberrant odor, the aberrant odor had to be identified. Th e two parts were identical except that the aberrant odor was interchanged w ith the identical odors in the second as compared with the first part. Resu lts revealed a decrease in odor discrimination with age. Moreover, with inc reased task duration odor discrimination performance decreased considerably in older male adults while it remained unchanged in young male adults. In addition, in young adults a small advantage in females as compared with mal es was found in the first part of the odor discrimination task, but this ef fect disappeared with increased task duration. In conclusion, task duration should be taken into consideration as a factor influencing odor discrimina tion in aging.