 THURSDAY, July 2, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Children with autism spectrum disorders appear to respond to stinky smells differently from children without autism, a new study found. The researchers exposed 36 children -- 18 who had autism and 18 who did not -- to alternating bouquets of pleasant smells, such as roses or shampoo, or unpleasant smells, such as sour milk or rotten fish. A second tube measured how much air the children were breathing in during each scent -- in other words, how much of a sniff they were taking. They found that children who did not have autism took a longer sniff for roses and a shorter one for rotten fish, and the difference in breathing happened quickly, within one-third of second of being exposed to the scent. Story highlights A study says children with autism spectrum disorder may be less sensitive to odors 
 
 Researchers developed a device to measure children's responses to good and bad smells 
 
 The device might one day help diagnose autism 
 
 (CNN) Children with autism spectrum disorder often have either an exaggerated or a numbed response to sight, sound and touch.
– A surprisingly simple sniff test shows promise in detecting autism in kids—perhaps even in those who aren't yet toddlers because it doesn't involve responding to questions. Israeli researchers found that autistic kids don't react strongly to strong smells, of either the pleasant or unpleasant variety, reports CNN. In the experiment, they exposed 36 kids to nice scents such as roses and to awful ones such as rotting fish. Half the kids did not have autism, and they reacted they way you'd expect—they immediately inhaled more deeply on the pleasant odors and took shorter sniffs on the nasty ones. The other 18 kids, however, all of whom have autism, did not alter their breathing as rapidly, reports the New York Times. "The sense of smell is in fact a major component of human social interaction," says lead author Liron Rozenkrantz of the Weizmann Institute of Science, as quoted by HealthDay. "Given that olfaction is probably altered in autism, could it be that this is a part of the social challenge in autism?" Researchers, whose findings were published in the journal Current Biology, didn't know which kids had the diagnosis during the tests, but they were able to correctly identify those with autism 81% of the time. The average age of the kids in the study was 7, and Rozenkrantz says the next step will be to conduct long-term studies on younger children. (Parents with an age gap might have a greater risk for autistic kids.)