Positive and negative contexts predict duration of pig vocalisations

Friel, M, Kunc, HP, Griffin, K ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4644-1771, Asher, L and Collins, LM, 2019. Positive and negative contexts predict duration of pig vocalisations. Scientific Reports, 9: 2062. ISSN 2045-2322

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Abstract

Emotions are mental states occurring in response to external and internal stimuli and thus form an integral part of an animal’s behaviour. Emotions can be mapped in two dimensions based on their arousal and valence. Whilst good indicators of arousal exist, clear indicators of emotional valence, particularly positive valence, are still rare. However, positively valenced emotions may play a crucial role in social interactions in many species and thus, an understanding of how emotional valence is expressed is needed. Vocalisations are a potential indicator of emotional valence as they can reflect the internal state of the caller. We experimentally manipulated valence, using positive and negative cognitive bias trials, to quantify changes in pig vocalisations. We found that grunts were shorter in positive trials than in negative trials. Interestingly, we did not find differences in the other measured acoustic parameters between the positive and negative contexts as reported in previous studies. These differences in results suggest that acoustic parameters may differ in their sensitivity as indicators of emotial valence. However, it is important to understand how similar contexts are, in terms of their valence, to be able to fully understand how and when acoustic parameters reflect emotional states.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Scientific Reports
Creators:	Friel, M., Kunc, H.P., Griffin, K., Asher, L. and Collins, L.M.
Publisher:	Nature Publishing Group
Date:	14 February 2019
Volume:	9
ISSN:	2045-2322
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1038/s41598-019-38514-w DOI 38514 Publisher Item Identifier
Rights:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	06 Mar 2019 11:17
Last Modified:	06 Mar 2019 11:17
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/35902

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