Emotion and Future Research Flashcards
How did Dawkins 1990 describe animal welfare?
“let us not mince words, animal welfare involves the subjective feelings of animals”
How did Duncan 1993 define welfare?
Neither health nor lack of fitness or stress is necessary and/or sufficient to conclude good animal welfare - welfare is dependant upon what the animals feel
What are the 3 methods of assessing welfare?
Animal choice
Conventional indicators of welfare eg immune function and stress physiology
Novel indicators of animal emotion (covered in behaviour unit too)
Why is rolls 2005 definition of emotion useful?
gives behavioural basis to assess emotions regardless of conscious experience
- chocie and demand are citical behavioural underpinnings to the definition “a reward is anything an animal will irk to obtain, a punisher is anything it will work to avoid” - gives link between emotions and studies of animal welfare/choice
What is approaching or working for soemthing associated with?
Positive affect and vice versa
What is the assumption used when linking animal emotions to animal choice?
Presenting stimuli that they will work to access induces a positive affective state
What is the core affect space?
Watson 1999, Carver 2001, Mendl 2010
Approach and avoidance systems underlie position in this core affect space = dimensional view of emotion
> Behaviour activation system/positive - DA governed system
> FFFS/behaviour inhibition system - NA governed system
- presence/abscence of punishers and rewards induce difference arousal and valence -> different affect or emotion
Outline some exceptions to the general rules of animal choice and emotion?
- approaching theta to inspect it
- Drug addicts want the drug - work for it - but the “liking” or rewards value drops away (chosen stimuli are not rewarding)
- some disorders wanting may drop away but liking remains eg. anorexia. Rewarding stimuli not chosen.
What are novel welfare indicators usually based on?
An explicit theoretical or emperical grounding linking them to emotion
- Cognitive bias - empiricale and theoretical rationale
- Emotional valence laterization hypothesis - primarily empirical rationale
Outline cognitive bias
Adaptive changes in decision making under ambiguity reflect affective state - investigating mood rather than arousal
Probabalistic not deterministic
Mendl 2010
What is the emotional valence lateralisation hypothesis?
Positive stimuli/emotions processed in left hemisphere (humans)
Negative/novel/threat processed on right side
> Novel stimuli attended to in left visual or auditory field
> Animals in a negative state are more likely to use left visual/auditory field to proess stimuli
Give some studies looking at the emotional valence lateralisation hypothesis
> Sinischalchi 2010 - dogs in box, projection of threat shown to both visual fields - majority of dogs turned left (right hemisphere dominates) whereas when dog shown, no preference to turn either way
Larose 2006 - horses with higher emotionality index (fear/excitement?!) looked at object more with left eye (right hemisphere)
How may novel indicators be validated?
Using underlying assumption that stimuli animals choose induce positive emotional states
Why are conventional indicators often inaccurate?
Abnormal behaviour - may denote suffering or coping
Immune function maybe affected by other disorders
Body condition - food v exercise
Stress physiology - no valence
Give a study shooing the lack of valence of the stress response
Buwalda 2012 - corticosterone levels mimic in social defeat and sexual encounters
Braesicke 2005 - blood pressure increases same amount when anticipating food or consuming it (capuchin monkeys)
