The role of context specificity in learning: the effects of training context on explosives detection in dogs.

Various experiments revealed that if an animal learns a stimulus-response-reinforcer relationship in one context and is then tested in another context there is usually a lessening of stimulus control, and the same discriminative stimuli that reliably controlled the behavior in the first context will have less effect in the new context. This reduction in performance is known as the "context shift effect." The effect of changing context on the probability of detecting explosives was investigated in seven highly trained explosives detection dogs (EDDs).

A simple system for the remote detection and analysis of sniffing in explosives detection dogs.

In this article, we describe a device that we have developed, for both research and operational purposes, to assist handlers of sniffer dogs and improve efficiency of search. The device transmits sounds from the dog's muzzle area to a listener, enabling determination of whether the dog is actually sniffing during a search. Both the aural and the computerized sound analyses enable study of the dog's sniffing behavior under a variety of situations.