Odor intensity: Differences in the exponent of the psychophysical function

A series of five experiments showed that there are reliable differences among the exponents of the psychophysical power functions for odorants. There was virtually a perfect rank-order correlation between the size of the exponent and the water-solubility of the odorants. The exponents for odorants that are completely soluble in water (n-propanol and acetone) were approximately 2.5 times the size of the exponents for odorants that are insoluble in water (n-octanol and geraniol). For n-aliphatic alcohols, the size of the exponent and solubility in water decrease as a function of carbon chain-length. Although the exponents were higher when the stimuli were delivered with an air-dilution olfactometer than when they were sniffed from cotton swabs, the relative values among odorants were independent of the method of stimulus presentation.

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