Validation and refinement of cogntive bias-based techniques for assessment of affective state in animals.

了解动物的感受是很有用的。如果我们知道他们什么时候害怕、无聊或痛苦，让他们更快乐就容易多了。解释动物的情绪是一个难题，因为与人类不同，它们无法报告自己的感受。幸运的是，人类和动物的基本情感可能非常相似，因为情感具有保护我们的共同功能。参与让我们快乐的活动，如饮食和性，避免我们感到痛苦或恐惧的情况，将确保我们的基因存活到下一代。人类和动物情感功能的相似性表明了共同的进化起源，这反过来又表明，负责情感的生物机制也可能是共享的。这种相似性构成了解释动物情感的方法的基础。例如，如果我们知道人类的幸福感与一系列行为、生理和心理特征有关，比如微笑、低水平的应激激素和对未来的乐观，我们在动物身上发现了类似的模式，那么可以肯定的是，这种动物是幸福的。然而，这里有必要提醒一下：进化已经对不同的物种进行了修补，假设人类的每一个幸福指标都与另一个物种的幸福相关联是不安全的;当黑猩猩露出牙齿“微笑”时，这实际上是一种威胁的表现。出于这个原因，我们不应该依赖于任何单一的措施，而是应该使用所有可用的信息时，试图解释动物的情绪。我们的目标是开发新的方法来测量动物的情绪的基础上，在人类的发现，我们的情绪会影响我们的思维。“头”和“心”经常被描绘成相互竞争的野兽，但正如我们在上面看到的，情感可能是做出正确决定的关键。事实上，研究已经证实，我们的情绪会严重影响我们看待世界的方式，我们对世界的记忆以及我们做出的判断。例如，一个抑郁的人会把一个杯子解释为半空，而一个快乐的人会把同一个杯子解释为半满。这种现象被心理学家称为“认知偏差”。我们建议使用认知偏差作为动物情绪的衡量标准。我们将要求动物将中性刺激分为好的或坏的。我们预测，如果动物是快乐的，那么它们更有可能对一个模糊的刺激感到乐观，而如果它们是悲伤或焦虑的，它们更有可能感到悲观。像这样的技术已经在老鼠身上产生了一些令人鼓舞的结果，并且希望将这些发现扩展到一种鸟类，欧洲椋鸟。我们希望设计出快速且易于实施的认知偏见任务。我们希望通过利用有关鸟类自然行为的知识来做到这一点。我们将从训练椋鸟从罐子上取下纸板盖来取出隐藏的蠕虫开始。然后，我们将告诉鸟类，一种颜色的盖子（例如白色）与美味的蠕虫有关，另一种颜色（例如黑色）与有毒的蠕虫有关。一旦椋鸟学会了这种区分，我们将用中间灰色阴影的盖子来挑战它们。我们预测，椋鸟的情绪越乐观，它将一个模糊的灰色盖子视为预测美味蠕虫的机会就越高。我们将通过比较小裸笼中椋鸟的认知偏差，与充满栖息地和水浴的大笼中的鸟类的认知偏差，来研究不同类型的住房对鸟类情绪的影响。除了开发用于测量认知偏差的行为技术外，我们还希望提出改善圈养椋鸟住房的具体建议。

It would be useful to understand how animals feel. If we knew when they were frightened, bored or in pain it would be much easier to make them happier. Interpreting animals' emotions is a hard problem, because unlike humans they cannot report their feelings. Luckily, basic emotions are likely to be very similar in humans and animals because emotions serve a common function of protecting us. Engaging in activities that make us happy, like eating and sex, and avoiding situations in which we feel pain or fear will ensure that our genes survive to the next generation. The similarity of function between human and animal emotion suggests a common evolutionary origin, which in turn suggests that the biological mechanisms responsible for emotions are also likely to be shared. This similarity forms the basis of methods used for interpreting animal emotions. For example, if we know that happiness in humans is associated with a suite of behavioural, physiological and psychological features, such as smiling, low levels of stress hormones and optimism about the future, and we find a similar pattern in an animal, then it is probably a safe bet that this animal is happy. However, a word of caution is necessary here: evolution has tinkered with different species, and it is not safe to assume that every single indicator of happiness in humans will also be associated with happiness in another species; when a chimp gives a toothy 'smile', this is actually a threat display. For this reason, we should not depend on any single measure, but should use all available information when trying to interpret animals' emotions. We aim to develop new methods for measuring animal emotion based on findings in humans that our emotions affect our thinking. The 'head' and the 'heart' are often portrayed as rival beasts, but as we have seen above, emotion is likely to be vital for making good decisions. Indeed, research has confirmed that our emotions can significantly bias how we see the world, what we remember about it and the judgments we make. For example, a depressed person will interpret a glass as half empty, whereas a happy person will interpret the same glass as half full. Such phenomena are referred to by psychologists as 'cognitive biases'. We propose to use cognitive bias as a measure of animal emotion. We will do this by asking animals to classify neutral stimuli as either good or bad. We predict that if animals are happy then they are more likely to be optimistic about an ambiguous stimulus, whereas if they are sad or anxious they are more likely to be pessimistic. A technique like this has already produced some encouraging results in rats, and would like to extend these findings to a species of bird, the European starling. We want to devise cognitive bias tasks that are quick and easy to implement. We hope to do this by tapping into knowledge about the natural behaviour of birds. We will start by training starlings to remove a cardboard lid from a pot to retrieve a hidden worm. We will then teach the birds that one colour of lid (e.g. white) is associated with a tasty worm and another colour (e.g. black) is associated with a toxic, bitter-tasting worm. Once the starlings have learnt this discrimination we will challenge them with lids of intermediate shade of grey. We predict that the more optimistic a starling is feeling the higher will be the chance that it treats an ambiguous grey lid as predicting a tasty worm. We will investigate the emotional impact of different kinds of housing in our birds by comparing the cognitive bias of starlings in small bare cages, with that of birds in large cages enriched with perches and water baths. As well as developing behavioural techniques for measurement of cognitive bias, we also hope to arrive at specific recommendations for improvement in the housing of captive starlings.