10.5061/DRYAD.322BB
Neave, Heather W.
University of British Columbia
Daros, Rolnei R.
University of British Columbia
Costa, João H. C.
University of British Columbia
von Keyserlingk, Marina A. G.
University of British Columbia
Weary, Daniel M.
University of British Columbia
Data from: Pain and pessimism: dairy calves exhibit negative judgement
bias following hot-iron disbudding
Dryad
dataset
2014
dehorn
animal emotion
cognitive bias
operant
2014-11-04T00:00:00Z
2014-11-04T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080556
21528 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Pain is defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience
associated with actual or potential tissue damage, but emotional states
are difficult to directly assess in animals. Researchers have assessed
pain using behavioural and physiological measures, but these approaches
are limited to understanding the arousal rather than valence of the
emotional experience. Cognitive bias tasks show that depressed humans
judge ambiguous events negatively and this technique has been applied to
assess emotional states in animals. However, limited research has examined
how pain states affect cognitive processes in animals. Here we present the
first evidence of cognitive bias in response to pain in any non-human
species. In two experiments, dairy calves (n = 17) were trained to respond
differentially to red and white video screens and then tested with
unreinforced ambiguous colours in two or three test sessions before and
two sessions after the routine practice of hot-iron disbudding. After
disbudding calves were more likely to judge ambiguous colours as negative.
This ‘pessimistic’ bias indicates that post-operative pain following
hot-iron disbudding results in a negative change in emotional state.
Calf approach responses in the cognitive bias taskCalf approach responses
to each screen for each session before and after disbudding (%). Approach
responses have been averaged across trials (23 each of positive and
negative screens; 5 of each ambigous screen) within each
sessionDRYAD_Table 1_Calf responses.docx