Banca de DEFESA: MARIA LOUYSE DOS SANTOS LOPES

Uma banca de DEFESA de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
DISCENTE : MARIA LOUYSE DOS SANTOS LOPES
DATA : 04/04/2017
HORA: 08:00
LOCAL: Anfiteatro das Aves
TÍTULO:

Cognitive bias in horses (Equus caballus)

PALAVRAS-CHAVES:

Horses; Learning; Cognitive bias; Personality; Welfare; Emotions.

PÁGINAS: 45
GRANDE ÁREA: Ciências Humanas
ÁREA: Psicologia
RESUMO:

Studies on welfare show that several species of animals in worse emotional conditions exhibit learning and memory deficiencies as well as cognitive bias, in the sense of judging ambiguous stimuli as negative stimuli (ie they are pessimistic). However, most of these studies disregard the influence of the animal's personality at the time of testing. In this study we applied the methodology of cognitive bias tests to assess the emotional state of horses (Equus caballus) championship participants vaquejada, considered the stressing factor for the animals. We tested the hypotheses that: 1) animals in worse emotional state (indicated from the tests of cognitive bias) present worse performance in learning tasks of local discrimination and 2) the cognitive bias is influenced by the personality of the animal. The study was conducted with 21 adult animals, 11 males and 10 females, allocated in a hotel for horses and all submitted to training for sports activities, such as championships. We found that the pessimistic and optimistic profiles were predictive of learning and that more sociable animals with humans had better learning performance. Our work showed that the methodology of cognitive bias is an easy and fast applicability tool, demonstrating being able to assess emotional aspects relevant to animal learning and welfare. However, the personality of the animal needs to be taken into account to avoid false negatives.

MEMBROS DA BANCA:
Externo à Instituição - MATEUS JOSÉ RODRIGUES PARANHOS DA COSTA - UNESP
Presidente - 2696495 - RENATA GONCALVES FERREIRA
Externo ao Programa - 2611941 - VIVIANE DA SILVA MEDEIROS