TY - JOUR
T1 - Performance of domestic dogs on an olfactory discrimination of a homologous series of alcohols
AU - Hall, Nathaniel J.
AU - Collada, Adriana
AU - Smith, David W.
AU - Wynne, Clive
PY - 2016/5/1
Y1 - 2016/5/1
N2 - Dogs are deployed for the detection of a wide variety of chemical stimuli. Despite their wide use, little basic research has explored canine olfactory generalization and discrimination. In the present study, we assessed canine odor discrimination amongst a series of chemically-related aliphatic alcohols. Domestic dogs were trained to discriminate 1-pentanol from air in a two-choice operant discrimination procedure until reaching an 85% accuracy criterion. In a series of transfer tasks, we assessed dogs' generalization and discrimination between related odorants by replacing the S- stimulus with an alcohol related to pentanol, differing only in the length of the carbon chain. Dogs showed an increase in discrimination performance with an increase in the difference in the number of carbon atoms between pentanol and the comparison alcohol (p <0.001). These results indicate that this graded series of alcohols may be a useful stimulus set for studying olfactory generalization and discrimination processes in dogs, and that dogs show the same relationship between chemical similarity and discrimination performance as has been observed with humans, monkeys, honeybees, elephants, and rats.
AB - Dogs are deployed for the detection of a wide variety of chemical stimuli. Despite their wide use, little basic research has explored canine olfactory generalization and discrimination. In the present study, we assessed canine odor discrimination amongst a series of chemically-related aliphatic alcohols. Domestic dogs were trained to discriminate 1-pentanol from air in a two-choice operant discrimination procedure until reaching an 85% accuracy criterion. In a series of transfer tasks, we assessed dogs' generalization and discrimination between related odorants by replacing the S- stimulus with an alcohol related to pentanol, differing only in the length of the carbon chain. Dogs showed an increase in discrimination performance with an increase in the difference in the number of carbon atoms between pentanol and the comparison alcohol (p <0.001). These results indicate that this graded series of alcohols may be a useful stimulus set for studying olfactory generalization and discrimination processes in dogs, and that dogs show the same relationship between chemical similarity and discrimination performance as has been observed with humans, monkeys, honeybees, elephants, and rats.
KW - Alcohol
KW - Canine
KW - Carbon discrimination
KW - Dogs
KW - Odorants
KW - Olfaction
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U2 - 10.1016/j.applanim.2016.03.016
DO - 10.1016/j.applanim.2016.03.016
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84962252623
SN - 0168-1591
VL - 178
SP - 1
EP - 6
JO - Applied Animal Behaviour Science
JF - Applied Animal Behaviour Science
ER -