Edwards, Timothy L.Bhasin, Ishan2026-06-052026-06-052026https://hdl.handle.net/10289/18325Scent-detection dogs are often expected to identify target odours across a range of concentrations, despite typically being trained using a single baseline concentration. This raises the possibility that concentration changes may disrupt stimulus control and reduce accurate responding in applied settings. Previous research suggests that dogs may show limited generalisation when target quantity or concentration differs substantially from training, indicating that concentration may be a functionally important dimension of olfactory stimulus control. The present study examined whether dogs trained to detect target odours at a single concentration would spontaneously generalise responding to higher concentrations of those same odours. Three dogs were trained using an automated olfactometer to discriminate two target odours, cinnamaldehyde and hexanoic acid, from non-target odours. After discrimination training, novel non-target testing, and intermittent reinforcement training, two dogs completed non-reinforced probe trials involving higher-concentration variants of the trained target odours. Probe responding differed systematically across odours. For both dogs, indications to higher-concentration hexanoic acid probes were more frequent than indications to non-targets, but less frequent than indications to the trained target, consistent with partial generalisation. In contrast, indications to the higher-concentration cinnamaldehyde probe overlapped with indications to non-targets, suggesting little reliable transfer of stimulus control. These findings suggest that training at a single concentration may not be sufficient to support robust generalisation across concentration changes and highlight the importance of treating concentration as a relevant training dimension in scent-detection training.enAll items in Research Commons are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.Thesis