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Emotional state and personality influence cognitive flexibility in horses (Equus caballus)
- Source :
- Journal of Comparative Psychology, Journal of Comparative Psychology, American Psychological Association, 2018, 132 (2), pp.130-140. ⟨10.1037/com0000091⟩
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- HAL CCSD, 2018.
-
Abstract
- Emotions are recognized as strong modulators of cognitive capacities. However, studies have mainly focused on the effect of negative emotions, with few investigating positive emotions. Recent studies suggest that traits of personality can modulate the effects of emotion on cognitive performance. This study aimed to assess whether emotional states differing according to their valence influenced the ability to achieve instrumental conditioning and learning flexibility and to determine the influence of personality. After being tested for their personality, 55 mares underwent acquisition and extinction procedures of instrumental conditioning in a box previously associated with negative events (e.g., novel and sudden stimuli; E-), positive events (e.g., food reward; E+), or no particular event (E⁰). This contextual conditioning induced contrasting behavioral and physiological responses during acquisition, indicating that E- horses were in a negative and E+ horses were in a positive emotional state. Although acquisition performance did not differ between groups, E+ horses showed a greater flexibility in the extinction phase of instrumental learning than E- and E⁰ horses. Furthermore, fearless personality was related to better acquisition and increased cognitive flexibility. This study demonstrates that horses were able to undergo contextual conditioning that induced negative or more positive emotional states and that this latter emotional state enhanced cognitive flexibility. (PsycINFO Database Record
- Subjects :
- media_common.quotation_subject
[SDV]Life Sciences [q-bio]
Emotions
emotion
Developmental psychology
03 medical and health sciences
Habits
stress
0302 clinical medicine
conditioning
Personality
Animals
Humans
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Animal cognition
[INFO]Computer Science [cs]
050102 behavioral science & comparative psychology
Effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance
Horses
Valence (psychology)
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
media_common
learning
Behavior, Animal
extinction
05 social sciences
Cognitive flexibility
Cognition
temperament
Conditioning
Conditioning, Operant
Temperament
Female
Psychology (miscellaneous)
Psychology
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 07357036
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Comparative Psychology, Journal of Comparative Psychology, American Psychological Association, 2018, 132 (2), pp.130-140. ⟨10.1037/com0000091⟩
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....1918c65ab316822ef73256e4f1db2c3e