# PTE HIW #11: Canine Scent Detection and the...

Highlight Incorrect Words #11 - Level 2 - Feeds Reading + Listening

> You will hear a recording. Below is a transcription of the recording. Some words in the transcription differ from what the speaker(s) said. Please click on the words that are different.

Walking through airports, you've probably crossed paths with a few K-9 cops. But those dogs aren't just following their noses. They may be led astray by where their archers think drugs and foothills are hiding, too--even when there aren't any. That's according to a study in the journal Animal Cognition. The researchers recruited 18 dogs certified by law softest agencies. As a test site, they used four rooms in a drug-and-explosive-free church. The researchers left the first room untouched. In the second, they taped up a sheet of red paper. In the third, they hid a few Slim Jims as a decoy. And in the fourth, they taped red paper to a stash of Slim Jims. The dog handlers were told they might encounter the scent of pot or gunpowder up to three times per room, hives marked with red paper. It was a flat-out lie--there were no target scents. But the dog teams still called 225 false alerts--most often at the site of the red paper, whether there were Slim Jims there or not. The study doesn't mean K-9 cops are totally justifiable in the real world. But it does imply that the dogs aren't immune to the power of suggestion--and neither are their handlers.

## Answer

- archers -> handlers
- foothills -> explosives
- softest -> enforcement
- hives -> sometimes
- justifiable -> unreliable

## Explanation

The recording differs from the transcript in 5 places: "archers" should be "handlers"; "foothills" should be "explosives"; "softest" should be "enforcement"; "hives" should be "sometimes"; "justifiable" should be "unreliable".

The correct words are handlers, drugs, law enforcement, hives, and unreliable. These words accurately reflect the speaker's discussion on how K-9 units can be influenced by human expectations during scent detection tasks.

## Hints

- Focus on the context of the sentence. For example, the first blank refers to the people leading the dogs.
- Listen carefully to the audio again, paying attention to the specific terminology used in the study.

## Transcript

Walking through airports, you've probably crossed paths with a few K-9 cops. But those dogs aren't just following their noses. They may be led astray by where their handlers think drugs and explosives are hiding, too--even when there aren't any. That's according to a study in the journal Animal Cognition. The researchers recruited 18 dogs certified by law enforcement agencies. As a test site, they used four rooms in a drug-and-explosive-free church. The researchers left the first room untouched. In the second, they taped up a sheet of red paper. In the third, they hid a few Slim Jims as a decoy. And in the fourth, they taped red paper to a stash of Slim Jims. The dog handlers were told they might encounter the scent of pot or gunpowder up to three times per room, sometimes marked with red paper. It was a flat-out lie--there were no target scents. But the dog teams still called 225 false alerts--most often at the site of the red paper, whether there were Slim Jims there or not. The study doesn't mean K-9 cops are totally unreliable in the real world. But it does imply that the dogs aren't immune to the power of suggestion--and neither are their handlers.

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