DOCSLIB.ORG

Emotion Disciplines and Methods

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Emotion Disciplines and Methods Emotion Disciplines and Methods Why emotion in cognitive science? clinical and counseling psychologists introspection and psychoanalytic- unconscious recent work (LeDoux, Damasio) physiologists emotion closely tied to response of body to stress • thought psychiatrists • perception emotions out of control • decision making neurologists often the first screening • learning experimental psychologists unconscious computations underlie affects on behavior, social interaction, effectiveness conscious decision neuropsychologists Historical Perspective on Emotion versus Cognition Neurophysiologists studying emotion in animals (Le Doux) Why not part of cognitive science? Methods Roots of the ideas (LeDoux) • fear conditioning • anatomical tracing • lesion and ablation Greek preoccupation with rationality • behavior Man as a rational thinker Freud - the unconscious is… Philosophy - the modern mind home of primitive instinct preoccupation with consciousness Decartes - “I think therefore I am” link between humans and animals humans are conscious humans are above animals an enormously important component of the human psyche… rationality is there to suppress…. 1 time to reevaluate “science of mind” Cognitive science failure of logical computation resurrects the Greek idea of mind emphasis on neural computation rationality and its “side-kick” - language evolution of adaptive systems human mind • “carefully engineered machine” progress of neuroscience no place for “animal mind” Le Doux’s Perspective on Emotion Emotional behavior highly conserved not just 1 thing through evolution each emotion best studied in isolation 4 F’s • fear - different brain areas, different functions • fight • disgust • flight • happiness • feeding and …. • depression/sadness Emotional responses • freezing, heart rate, autonomic …etc. When emotions occur in animals with Labeled conscious feelings, like love, hate, etc. consciousness….. red herrings emotions are experienced consciously not worthy of scientific study generated by unconscious processes once aroused -> feelings “conscious” part of the post-hoc analyses post-hoc analysis • love, annoyance, anger – basically cognitive 2 Emotion can be studied with animal models Emotional feelings qualitatively same a any other conscious state animal and human brains more comparable here than anywhere else! That is an apple - ah ha! I’m mad! Emotions powerful behavioral motivators Emotions happen to us passively love, hurt, anger, insult - war, etc. though we can try to manipulate them Where in the brain is emotion? lesion/ablation approach decorticate animals showed normal emotion • cats - provoked…crouched, etc. • autonomic arousal – pupil dilation – blood pressure increases – piloerection still somewhat abnormal • unregulated…. 3 Cannon and Bard (29) stimulus thalamus hypothalamus body reaction Stream of Feeling Papez Circuit - Limbic Brain stimulus Herrick’s idea’s (early 20th century) thalamus brain evolution lateral surface -phylogentically newer medial part - phylogenetically older hypothalamus body reaction Stream of Thought Emotion from integration circuit stimulus stimulus thalamus thalamus cortex cortex cingulate hippocampus hypothalamus thalamus 4 Question If we are to study emotions individually…. How many emotions are there? What are they? How do we decide they are separate? How many emotions? Ekman’s list W. James “It is difficult to imagine emotions fear in the absence of their bodily expressions” sadness happiness J. LeDoux anger disgust “We know our emotions by their intrusions” surprise When they really intrude! How many emotions? Study emotions individually fear - phobias LeDoux’s working hypothesis sadness - depression happiness - mania If correct that they are different systems anger - aggression good choice If not… disgust - OCD nothing lost by focusing on one 5 Why Fear? pervasive and diverse in humans Expressed similarly in humans and animals predator, etc…. withdraw intellectually-based existential fear immobility (freezing) defensive aggression prominent and diverse in psychopathology submission phobias • snakes, cats, heights, open spaces, social situations... Repertoire Fear conditioning startle orientation standard classical conditioning freeze, flight, or attack learning to pair a previously objective stimulus…e.g., tone, etc. cat and rat…first rat startles, next orients,.. to a painful outcome….. the tone elicits fear…without the painful If far -> flee outcome…. If close ->freeze A tool for studying emotion in animals... If unsuccessful - vocalize and attack Rat Fear Conditioning fear condition rat to sound-shock pair fruit fly cat marine snail dog Which parts of the auditory system required? fish macaque dissect out the neuro-pathways lizard human... pigeon rabbit rat 6 Where else? Auditory cortex thalamus (MGN)??? • anatomical tracers… damage did not extinguish conditioning • from MGN reveals projections to 4 areas... Systematically ablate each area in turn… More evidence Stimulation of amygdala (Kapp) result clear amygdala destruction produces a fear response • no fear conditioning activation of autonomic nervous system So what does the amygdala do? Central gray Lateral hypothalamus Find areas to which the amygdala projects Paraventricular hypothalamus anatomical forward tracing methods Reticulopontis caudalis 7 High Road and Low Road Conclusions and Implications What if the fear trigger is similar to a non- fear can bypass the neocortex fear trigger…. Schneiderman et al… what about the sensory pattern recognition similar tones…1 with shock 1 without systems in cortex…???? at first rabbits over-generalize eventually learn to fear only the “bad” one pattern detection in the thalamus??? destruction of auditory cortex • Over-generlize again Low road for speed! The inputs of the fear system sensory thalamus What we have been talking about sensory cortex higher level discriminations…. cognitive appraisal… • e.g. seeing a gun 8 rhinal cortex and hippocampus Summary -What is an emotion? memory a brain process • physiological reaction to stimulus medial prefrontal extinction psychological reaction to a perception inhibition! • danger, life-altering event system of drives, actions, fulfillment • drives - stimulus -> glucose drop, etc • action - eat • satisfaction - contentment Taxonomy Taxonomy primary emotions secondary emotions hard-wired through limbic system • stimulus activates system • conscious deliberate cognitive evaluation – associatively conditioned – possible simultaneous activation of limbic – innate - ? (facial expressions) • primary route thereafter physiological response • hypothalamus - endochrine, neurotransmitters • internal response (ANS) Decision-making and Emotion A Case Study Phineas Gage Emotion and Human Decision-making accident - damage to frontal cortex Harlow’s study Pre-accident • responsible, good guy, leadership qualities, polite Post-accident • inability to plan, make good decisions, social sense – otherwise cognitively and perceptually intact 9 3D reconstruction of damage Gage (H. Damasio) prefrontal cortex bilaterally ventral and inner surfaces affected external surfaces preserved - working memory “ventromedial” • known to be involved in decision-making Modern Phineas Gage Standard Tests for Elliot Elliot IQ > normal brain tumor patient Wechsler adult intelligence scale > normal ventromedial prefrontal damage digit spans, etc. language comprehension > normal post-surgery Benton face matching task - fine language, mathematics, MMPI all other perceptual tests - normal couldn’t make a good decision - like Gage Standard Frontal Lobe Tests Change of perspective Wisconsin card sort task Began to notice the disaffected state of Elliot cards that can be sorted by color or form, etc failed to see evidence of any emotion person must switch criteria later test (Tranel) Elliot did fine • emotion-packed images Tests with incomplete knowledge • Elliot recognized the emotion he had felt previously • but was unaffected…. How many giraffes are there in New York City? Elliot normal Does the impairment in decision making relate to the impairment in feeling? 10 Tests for Elliot decision-making Dissecting the decision process read problem descriptions specify alternatives excellent maybe he doesn’t understand consequences means-end analysis consequence prediction x -> y given a goal - asked to design a way to reach read decision descriptions scenarios from personal and social domain predict what follows excellent excellent maybe he can’t consider right-wrong maybe he can’t initiate the process All said and done….. moral reasoning test Elliot replies: given a difficult moral problem - Kohlberg test must choose lessor of two evils, etc. excellent “but I still wouldn’t know what to do!” 11 Emotion and Reasoning Example decisions glucose drops….get hungry Somatic marker hypothesis (Damasio) unconscious not overt knowledge • decisions involve a body-based marker that is the result of a secondary emotion no inference no display of options….until you “feel” hungry object falls - “decide” to get out of the way unconscious automatic no inference decide who to vote for Possibilities what to major in pure reason hypothesis to pursue a friendship or romance generate a cost-benefit analysis whether or not to fly in bad weather decide the option with the cost-benefit ration what % of money to put in stocks situations complex, and quantification difficult
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Animal Welfare and the Paradox of Animal Consciousness
    ARTICLE IN PRESS Animal Welfare and the Paradox of Animal Consciousness Marian Dawkins1 Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK 1Corresponding author: e-mail address: [email protected] Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. Animal Consciousness: The Heart of the Paradox 2 2.1 Behaviorism Applies to Other People Too 5 3. Human Emotions and Animals Emotions 7 3.1 Physiological Indicators of Emotion 7 3.2 Behavioral Components of Emotion 8 3.2.1 Vacuum Behavior 10 3.2.2 Rebound 10 3.2.3 “Abnormal” Behavior 10 3.2.4 The Animal’s Point of View 11 3.2.5 Cognitive Bias 15 3.2.6 Expressions of the Emotions 15 3.3 The Third Component of Emotion: Consciousness 16 4. Definitions of Animal Welfare 24 5. Conclusions 26 References 27 1. INTRODUCTION Consciousness has always been both central to and a stumbling block for animal welfare. On the one hand, the belief that nonhuman animals suffer and feel pain is what draws many people to want to study animal welfare in the first place. Animal welfare is seen as fundamentally different from plant “welfare” or the welfare of works of art precisely because of the widely held belief that animals have feelings and experience emotions in ways that plants or inanimate objectsdhowever valuableddo not (Midgley, 1983; Regan, 1984; Rollin, 1989; Singer, 1975). On the other hand, consciousness is also the most elusive and difficult to study of any biological phenomenon (Blackmore, 2012; Koch, 2004). Even with our own human consciousness, we are still baffled as to how Advances in the Study of Behavior, Volume 47 ISSN 0065-3454 © 2014 Elsevier Inc.
    [Show full text]
  • Scientific Evaluation of Animal Emotions: Brief History and Recent New Zealand Contributions
    Scientific evaluation of animal emotions: Brief history and recent New Zealand contributions Beausoleil, N.J., Stratton, R.B., Guesgen, M.J., Sutherland, M.A., Johnson, C.B. Abstract The idea of animals having emotions was once rejected as being anthropomorphic and unscientific. However, with society’s changing views and advances in scientific knowledge and technology, the idea of animal emotions is becoming more accepted. Emotions are subjective internal experiences that can’t be measured directly. Animal welfare scientists must infer emotions by measuring the behavioural, physiological and neurobiological components of emotional experience. In this paper, we describe innovative ways in which these indicators have been used by New Zealand scientists to facilitate a more holistic understanding of the emotions and welfare of animals. Introduction From a scientific perspective, emotion is defined as an innate response to an event or situation (internal or external) that comprises behavioural, physiological, subjective (the feeling) and cognitive (subsequent decision-making) components.1 Emotions are the result of complex processing, by the nervous system, of sensory information gathered from within and outside the animal’s body. The capture and processing of this sensory information are influenced by the biology of the animal species, as well as by individual factors such as the animal’s genetic predispositions, life stage, sex, previous experience, learning and memory.2 The emotion or emotions resulting from these processes of mental evaluation are thus uniquely personal to the individual, but can be broadly characterized by their valence (pleasant or unpleasant) and the degree of arousal generated.3 While the behavioural, physiological and, in some cases, cognitive components of an emotional response can be scientifically evaluated using observable indicators, the subjective component cannot.
    [Show full text]
  • Emotions: from Brain to Robot
    Review TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences Vol.8 No.12 December 2004 Emotions: from brain to robot Michael A. Arbib1 and Jean-Marc Fellous2 1Computer Science, Neuroscience and USC Brain Project, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-2520, USA 2Biomedical Engineering Department and Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708-0281, USA Some robots have been given emotional expressions in noting that not all emotions need be like human emotions. an attempt to improve human–computer interaction. In We analyze emotion in two main senses: this article we analyze what it would mean for a robot to (1) Emotional expression for communication and social have emotion, distinguishing emotional expression for coordination. communication from emotion as a mechanism for the (2) Emotion for organization of behavior (action organization of behavior. Research on the neurobiology selection, attention and learning). of emotion yields a deepening understanding of inter- The first concerns ‘external’ aspect of emotions; the acting brain structures and neural mechanisms rooted in second ‘internal’ aspects. In animals, these aspects have neuromodulation that underlie emotions in humans and co-evolved. How might they enter robot design? Both other animals. However, the chemical basis of animal robots and animals need to survive and perform efficiently function differs greatly from the mechanics and compu- within their ‘ecological niche’ and, in each case, patterns of tations of current machines. We therefore abstract from coordination will greatly influence the suite of relevant biology a functional characterization of emotion that emotions (if such are indeed needed) and the means does not depend on physical substrate or evolutionary whereby they are communicated.
    [Show full text]
  • How Do Humans Represent the Emotions of Dogs? The
    Applied Animal Behaviour Science 162 (2015) 37–46 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Applied Animal Behaviour Science jou rnal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/applanim How do humans represent the emotions of dogs? The resemblance between the human representation of the canine and the human affective space a,∗ b a,c,1 Veronika Konok , Krisztina Nagy , Ádám Miklósi a Eötvös University, Department of Ethology, H-1117, Pázmány P. s. 1/c Budapest, Hungary b Szent István University, Faculty of Veterinary Science, H-1078, István u 2. Budapest, Hungary c MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group, Hungary a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: As (critical) anthropomorphism provides a useful hypothesis for looking at animal behav- Accepted 9 November 2014 ior, people’s reports about how they see animals’ emotions can provide a start point in the Available online 24 November 2014 direction of experiment-oriented studies. It has been shown that humans attribute a wide range of emotions to animals. The concept of ‘affective space’ is often used to model human Keywords: emotional states in a dimensional way. However, there has been no study carried out on Emotion how humans may construct non-human animals’ affective space. Our aim was to assess Dog owners’ attribution of emotions to their dogs (Canis familiaris), and to construct the affec- Affective space tive space for dogs. We used two questionnaires to investigate owners’ opinion about (1) Correspondence analysis the emotions that humans can recognize in dogs and dogs can recognize in humans, and (2) the behavior elements that characterize certain emotions.
    [Show full text]
  • The Ethics of Pain: Moral Status, Emotion, Cognition, And
    THE ETHICS OF PAIN: MORAL STATUS, EMOTION, COGNITION, AND THE LAW OF LABORATORY ANIMALS IN PAIN RESEARCH BY ERIKA A. MOSES A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS Bioethics May 2013 Winston-Salem, North Carolina Approved By: Nancy M.P. King, JD, Advisor Mark Hall, JD, Chair Ana S. Iltis, PhD ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank everyone at Wake Forest Center for Bioethics, Health, and Society. I would like to give a special thank you to my advisor, Professor Nancy M.P. King, and to my committee members, Professor Mark Hall and Professor Ana Iltis. I literally could not have completed this thesis without your support, knowledge, patience, and guidance. I would also like to thank my family members for all of their encouragement and support, especially my mom, dad, and my three loves, Gabriel, Lily, and Baby Christian. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract iv Introduction Pain Research and Animals: A Brief Overview v Chapter One Moral Status: Leveling the Ethical Playing Field 1 Chapter Two Animal Emotion: Bridging the Species Gap 16 Chapter Three Cognition and Emotion: Linking Process to Experience 36 Chapter Four U.S. Legislation: A Work in Progress 52 Chapter Five The Right Not to be Harmed without Significant Justification 68 References 77 Curriculum Vitae 82 iii ABSTRACT Moses, Erika A. THE ETHICS OF PAIN: MORAL STATUS, EMOTION, COGNITION, AND THE LAW OF LABORATORY ANIMALS IN PAIN RESEARCH Thesis under the direction of Nancy M.P.
    [Show full text]
  • Explicating Emotions
    EXPLICATING EMOTIONS by Andrea Scarantino B.S., Economics, Bocconi University, 1994 M.S., Philosophy of the Social Sciences, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1997 Ph.D., Economics, Universita’ Cattolica, 2000 M.A., Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, 2005 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of University of Pittsburgh in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2005 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Andrea Scarantino It was defended on July 20, 2005 and approved by Paul Griffiths, ARC Federation Fellow and Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Queensland (Co-Director) Peter Machamer, Professor of Philosophy, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh (Co-Director) Bob Brandom, Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Ruth Millikan, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Connecticut (Outside Reader) ii Copyright © by Andrea Scarantino 2005 iii EXPLICATING EMOTIONS Andrea Scarantino, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2005 In the course of their long intellectual history, emotions have been identified with items as diverse as perceptions of bodily changes (feeling tradition), judgments (cognitivist tradition), behavioral predispositions (behaviorist tradition), biologically based solutions to fundamental life tasks (evolutionary tradition), and culturally specific social artifacts (social constructionist tradition). The first objective of my work is to put some order in the mare magnum of theories of emotions. I taxonomize them into families and explore the historical origin and current credentials of the arguments and intuitions supporting them. I then evaluate the methodology of past and present emotion theory, defending a bleak conclusion: a great many emotion theorists ask “What is an emotion?” without a clear understanding of what counts as getting the answer right.
    [Show full text]
  • Explicating Emotions
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by D-Scholarship@Pitt EXPLICATING EMOTIONS by Andrea Scarantino B.S., Economics, Bocconi University, 1994 M.S., Philosophy of the Social Sciences, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1997 Ph.D., Economics, Universita’ Cattolica, 2000 M.A., Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, 2005 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of University of Pittsburgh in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2005 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Andrea Scarantino It was defended on July 20, 2005 and approved by Paul Griffiths, ARC Federation Fellow and Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Queensland (Co-Director) Peter Machamer, Professor of Philosophy, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh (Co-Director) Bob Brandom, Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Ruth Millikan, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Connecticut (Outside Reader) ii Copyright © by Andrea Scarantino 2005 iii EXPLICATING EMOTIONS Andrea Scarantino, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2005 In the course of their long intellectual history, emotions have been identified with items as diverse as perceptions of bodily changes (feeling tradition), judgments (cognitivist tradition), behavioral predispositions (behaviorist tradition), biologically based solutions to fundamental life tasks (evolutionary tradition), and culturally specific social artifacts (social constructionist tradition). The first objective of my work is to put some order in the mare magnum of theories of emotions. I taxonomize them into families and explore the historical origin and current credentials of the arguments and intuitions supporting them.
    [Show full text]
  • The Neural Circuits of Innate Fear: Detection, Integration, Action, and Memorization
    Downloaded from learnmem.cshlp.org on September 28, 2021 - Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press Review The neural circuits of innate fear: detection, integration, action, and memorization Bianca A. Silva,1 Cornelius T. Gross,2 and Johannes Gra¨ff1 1Laboratory of Neuroepigenetics, Brain Mind Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fe´de´rale Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland; 2Mouse Biology Unit, European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), 00015 Monterotondo, Italy How fear is represented in the brain has generated a lot of research attention, not only because fear increases the chances for survival when appropriately expressed but also because it can lead to anxiety and stress-related disorders when inade- quately processed. In this review, we summarize recent progress in the understanding of the neural circuits processing innate fear in rodents. We propose that these circuits are contained within three main functional units in the brain: a detection unit, responsible for gathering sensory information signaling the presence of a threat; an integration unit, responsible for incorporating the various sensory information and recruiting downstream effectors; and an output unit, in charge of initiating appropriate bodily and behavioral responses to the threatful stimulus. In parallel, the experience of innate fear also instructs a learning process leading to the memorization of the fearful event. Interestingly, while the detection, integration, and output units processing acute fear responses to different threats tend to be harbored in distinct brain cir- cuits, memory encoding of these threats seems to rely on a shared learning system. The term “fear” refers to a human emotion characterized by the will not be repeated here.
    [Show full text]
  • Scientific Evaluation of Animal Emotions: Brief History and Recent New Zealand Contributions
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Open Journal Systems at the Victoria University of Wellington Library Scientific evaluation of animal emotions: Brief history and recent New Zealand contributions Beausoleil, N.J., Stratton, R.B., Guesgen, M.J., Sutherland, M.A., Johnson, C.B. Abstract The idea of animals having emotions was once rejected as being anthropomorphic and unscientific. However, with society’s changing views and advances in scientific knowledge and technology, the idea of animal emotions is becoming more accepted. Emotions are subjective internal experiences that can’t be measured directly. Animal welfare scientists must infer emotions by measuring the behavioural, physiological and neurobiological components of emotional experience. In this paper, we describe innovative ways in which these indicators have been used by New Zealand scientists to facilitate a more holistic understanding of the emotions and welfare of animals. Introduction From a scientific perspective, emotion is defined as an innate response to an event or situation (internal or external) that comprises behavioural, physiological, subjective (the feeling) and cognitive (subsequent decision-making) components.1 Emotions are the result of complex processing, by the nervous system, of sensory information gathered from within and outside the animal’s body. The capture and processing of this sensory information are influenced by the biology of the animal species, as well as by individual factors such as the animal’s genetic predispositions, life stage, sex, previous experience, learning and memory.2 The emotion or emotions resulting from these processes of mental evaluation are thus uniquely personal to the individual, but can be broadly characterized by their valence (pleasant or unpleasant) and the degree of arousal generated.3 While the behavioural, physiological and, in some cases, cognitive components of an emotional response can be scientifically evaluated using observable indicators, the subjective component cannot.
    [Show full text]
  • Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress
    TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................. 7 Stress ........................................................................................................................................................ 8 Self-Regulation and Its Development ....................................................................................................... 9 Relationship between Stress and Self-Regulation .................................................................................. 10 Important Unanswered Questions ......................................................................................................... 12 PROCEDURE FOR EMPIRICAL LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................................................... 12 Search Terms .......................................................................................................................................... 13 Search Procedure ................................................................................................................................... 13 How and Why we included Psychiatric Disorders defined by Stress and Dysregulation ................... 14 How and Why We Included Animal Studies ....................................................................................... 15 FINDINGS ....................................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The Assessment of Cognitive Bias in Capuchin Monkeys Using a Computerized Task
    Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Psychology Theses Department of Psychology 5-8-2020 The Assessment of Cognitive Bias in Capuchin Monkeys Using a Computerized Task Kristin French Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/psych_theses Recommended Citation French, Kristin, "The Assessment of Cognitive Bias in Capuchin Monkeys Using a Computerized Task." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2020. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/psych_theses/216 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Psychology at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Psychology Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE ASSESSMENT OF COGNITIVE BIAS IN CAPUCHIN MONKEYS USING A COMPUTERIZED TASK by KRISTIN A. FRENCH Under the Direction of Michael J. Beran, PhD ABSTRACT Cognitive bias refers to the influence of affective state on the interpretation of ambiguous stimuli and has been used to assess emotional state in nonhuman animals. The current study assessed cognitive bias in 12 brown-tufted capuchin monkeys using three distinct computerized psychophysical tasks and a novel manipulation to affect that involved giving moneys gelatin foods that tasted either pleasant or unpleasant. In addition, monkeys were trained on several positive and negative training cues. Results showed that food type was not a factor in monkeys’ responses to ambiguous stimuli. Behavioral observation during test sessions revealed the unpleasant food may have acted as a form of enrichment, thereby providing the monkeys with two pleasant activities prior to assessments of their emotional states.
    [Show full text]
  • Implications for the Study of Emotions in Animals1
    Psicologia USP http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0103-656420140079 286 Reflections on a footnote: implications for the study of emotions in animals1 Emma Otta* Universidade de São Paulo, Instituto de Psicologia, Departamento de Psicologia Experimental. São Paulo, SP, Brasil Abstract: A footnote (FN) originally submitted as a comment to the article “Parsing Reward” led me to write this essay. The comment was rejected by the editor of a prestigious scientific journal in the area of behavioral neuroscience with the suggestion that it would be more appropriate for an “idle talk”. I believe that the core issues involved are important to address explicitly in a debate within the broad domain of the frontiers of human and biological sciences. The protagonists involved in the didactic episode of the FN, whose articles and books I have been reading over the years, are leaders in the field of neuroscience. In this essay the episode is historically contextualized and discussed in terms of potential implications for ethology, psychology and neuroscience. Keywords: emotion, animals, ethology, psychology, neuroscience. A footnote added to the article “Affective conscious- ago, but I decided to write it because I believe that the in- ness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans”, volved core issues are important and remain current. published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition (Panksepp, 2005), led me to write this essay in order to The suggestive Footnote discuss the study of emotions in animals and implications of this type of research for understanding human psycho- My reading of this paper was that the authors ad- logical processes.
    [Show full text]