The impact of auditory distraction on learning and task performance in working dogs

Distractions that lead to performance deficits in working dogs can be life-threatening to the dog, its handler, and others. To reduce the impact of extraneous stimuli, distractors that are likely to occur in the working environment can be incorporated into dogs’ training. Yet, the impact that distraction training has on learning efficacy remains unclear. Here, we investigated how training with an acoustic distractor impacts dogs’ capacity to learn and later perform a task in the presence of novel distractors. We found that dogs trained with an auditory distractor learned the task less efficiently than dogs trained in silence. Further, dogs trained with a distractor did not perform the learned task more efficiently when tested in the presence of novel acoustic or visual distractors. Dogs trained with an auditory distractor did habituate faster to a novel acoustic distractor during testing compared to dogs trained in silence, but this trend was not significant. Our findings suggest that the initial stages of learning should be conducted in a non-distracting environment to avoid negative impacts on learning. •Dogs trained in distracting environments learn tasks less efficiently than dogs trained in silence.•Dogs do not tend to generalize their ability to ignore learned distractors to novel distractors.•During the initial stages of learning, training should be conducted in a non-distracting environment.