dc.contributor.author	McGuirk, James N.	en
dc.contributor.committeechair	Feuerbacher, Erica N.	en
dc.contributor.committeemember	Gunter, Lisa M.	en
dc.contributor.committeemember	Andrukonis, Allison	en
dc.contributor.department	Animal and Poultry Sciences	en
dc.date.accessioned	2023-05-16T19:43:48Z	en
dc.date.available	2023-05-16T19:43:48Z	en
dc.date.issued	2023	en
dc.description.abstract	Animal shelters have limited resources, especially when considering the time and resources required for implementing behavior change protocols for resident dogs. This issue of resources is particularly relevant to the question of whether training should be carried out while dogs are living in shelters or if shelters should allocate their training resources to when the dog has been adopted and is in its new home. Given that a shelter is a different context from an adoptive home, a context in which dogs experience much greater stress levels than those living in homes, their learning could be impacted by both state- and context-dependent effects. These effects could result in reduced retention and recall of behaviors learned while living in the shelter. Research in other species has shown state-dependent and context-dependent learning effects, little is understood about the retention of learned behaviors by shelter dogs. In this study, we trained 20 owned and 20 shelter-living dogs in a training room within the animal shelter to acquire a novel behavior: touching their nose to a traffic cone. One month later, we tested both owned and shelter dogs’ performance of this behavior in their homes. We then assessed their response latency, and whether dogs correctly responded in their homes at the same training level reached in the shelter, or if behavioral criteria needed to be lowered for them to respond correctly. Results show that acquisition and recall by former shelter dogs closely correspond to that of owned dogs. Shelter dogs had much longer initial response latencies than owned dogs, but both groups were able to demonstrate fluency and test at higher criteria levels in the home than at the shelter. Dogs also demonstrated generalization of the behavior to their owners.	en
dc.description.degree	MALS	en
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10919/115075	en
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.publisher	Virginia Tech	en
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International	en
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/	en
dc.subject.cabt	shelter dog	en
dc.subject.cabt	dog behavior	en
dc.subject.cabt	state-dependent learning	en
dc.subject.cabt	context-dependent learning	en
dc.title	State- and Context-Dependent Learning Effects in Different Dog Populations	en
dc.type	Master's project	en
dc.type.dcmitype	Text	en
thesis.degree.discipline	Applied Animal Behavior and Welfare	en
thesis.degree.grantor	Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University	en
thesis.degree.level	masters	en
thesis.degree.name	Master of Agricultural and Life Sciences	en

State- and Context-Dependent Learning Effects in Different Dog Populations

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