There is a consensus that humans, rodents, and primates process odor mixtures configurally: that is, the mixture is perceived as a unique whole and not as a collection of its different components. However, it is commonly believed by dog trainers that dogs can analyze mixtures and break them down into their individual components: that is, that they process odor mixtures analytically. There is, however, little experimental evidence to support this belief. This experiment was designed to determine whether dogs trained on mixtures of three or five different odors would detect the individual odors when each component was tested. Our results show that the dogs were able to respond to each of the components on their first trial with each separate element of the mixture (p < 0.001). This finding presents the first experimental proof that dogs trained to detect a mixture will later detect its individual components. These results may be attributed to previous extensive general training of the tested dogs to detect odors, and to their being reared and maintained in an enriched olfactory environment.

人们一致认为，人类，啮齿动物和灵长类动物会按配置方式处理气味混合物：也就是说，该混合物被视为一个独特的整体，而不是其不同成分的集合。但是，训犬师通常认为狗可以分析混合物并将其分解成单独的成分：也就是说，它们可以分析气味混合物。但是，几乎没有实验证据支持这一信念。设计该实验的目的是确定接受三种或五种不同气味混合训练的狗在测试每种成分时是否会检测到单独的气味。我们的结果表明，狗在第一次试验中能够对混合物中的每个单独元素产生反应（p <0.001）。这一发现提出了第一个实验证据，即训练有素的狗会在以后检测其混合物。这些结果可以归因于先前对被测狗进行的广泛的一般训练以检测气味，以及归因于它们在丰富的嗅觉环境中的饲养和维持。