Pregnant Women: Not Totally Incapacitated

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Pregnant Women Not Totally Incapacitated

• By Anthony Marino and Amanda Alvarez

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Burgin

• According to popular belief, (and anecdotal
  accounts) pregnant women are more sensitive to
  odors than non-pregnant women. (This may explain
  their 3 a.m. cravings for burgers.)

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E. Leslie Cameron-Olfactory Pioneer

• Until recently, very little information has been
  known about such extrasensory olfactory
  abilities.
• Then! In 2007, one psychologist ventured where
  few had before and examined, scientifically, this
  olfaction transaction.

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Shocking Claims

• Prior to Camerons studiesTwo thirds of the
  pregnant participants claimed that their
  olfactory senses were heightened during
  pregnancy. Were they lying?!?!
• To test this, Cameron examined all women with a
  lie detector test, that shocked the pregnant
  women when caught lying.

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Methods

• JUST KIDDING! Cameron did not shock her
  participants.
• Truthfully, Cameron gathered 100 women for the
  study, 20 in each trimester of pregnancy, 20
  postpartum, and 20 controls who had never been
  pregnant.
• Cameron presented all women with self-report
  scales that were located on scent strips
• Cameron asked women to rate their sensitivity
  towards certain smells on a 1-7 scale (1 being
  the least intense/pleasant, seven being the most
  intense/pleasant).
• Women were also given a smell identification
  test.

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Furthermore..

• Participants were also asked to rate their sense
  of smell in general, as well as their sense of
  smell since becoming pregnant.
• In addition to their self report scales,
  participants were also watched to see how many
  times they scratched the odor strips, as
  potential indicators of their sensitivity.

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Results

• Consistent with popular belief, women in the
  first trimester claim to experience a heightened
  sensitivity to odors.
• See Graphs page 777.
• Furthermore, many pregnant women named twice as
  many unpleasant odors as they did pleasant odors.
  
• However, there was no statistically significant
  difference in performance between the pregnant
  women, and the non-pregnant women in the odor
  identification tasks.

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Discussion

• Why the confusion? Some reasons for women
  claiming heightened sensitivity to negative
  smells while pregnant could be evolutionary.
• Another reason for the discrepancy between
  self-report scales and performance could be
  because the underlying psychometric function for
  odor detection may be steeper in pregnant women.
  
• I.e. Pregnant women may perceive a small change
  in smell concentrationas a GIANT change in
  perception.

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Questions

• What other factors could have caused a
  discrepancy between the self-report skills and
  odor identification scores?
• Do you think the women are mal-informed, subject
  to the self-fulfilling prophecy (claiming they
  smell better just because theyve heard pregnant
  women are supposed to?

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Questions-Part Deux

• If sense of smell can be heightened during
  pregnancywhat implications does this have for
  the plasticity of the senses?
• How could Signal Detection theory be applied to
  this conundrum?