AIM: To evaluate smell recognition in pervasive developmental disorders (PDD). METHOD: Twenty-one PDD (experimental group) and 21 matched controls (control group) male adolescents were submitted to a standardized, 12-stimuli, smell battery in three moments: with no identification suggestion; associated to four linguistic alternatives for each stimulus, and submitted again, 25 days after, with no linguistic alternatives. Data was analyzed by t test and variance analysis (p=0,05). RESULTS: The experimental group scored worse than control group. Both groups scored better after stimuli and, after 25 days, scores lowered, but stayed higher than initially, without any stimuli (p<0,001). The gap was higher after 25 days, when the experimental group showed poorer smell memory from initial presentation (p<0,001). CONCLUSION: The experimental group showed lower recognition scores, unrelated to clues previously offered, which suggests a difficulty in phenomena and semantic meaning association. Even after matching odors nomination, the gap of recognition scores remains between groups, not only in a deficitary pattern, but also qualitatively disturbed.
child development disorders; pervasive; smell
