The effect of prior abuse on behavioural responses to emotional expression in the domestic horse (Equus caballus)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Several domestic species have shown discriminatory abilities when judging the level of affect in human faces. In other words, they can distinguish between positive (happy) and negative (angry) human facial expressions. As a species that relies heavily upon humans for survival, such recognition abilities aid domestic species in their interactions with human handlers. What has yet to be explored is whether former experiences of neglect or abuse influences subsequent behaviours in response to varying degrees of human emotion, expressed through facial expressions. Previous research suggests that poor welfare conditions, such as former experiences of abuse and neglect, can affect subsequent judgments of future events. Such that abused horses may have a diminished expectation of positive events, which often leads to an enhanced awareness of threatening stimuli, thereby, eliciting avoidance behaviour. The present study aims to add to the current literature by examining differences in behavioural responses to positive (happy) and negative (angry) human facial expressions, between horses with and without former experiences of abuse and neglect. Eleven horses were assigned to one of two experimental groups; 5 horses with known, prior experiences of abuse, and the remaining 6 horses served as the control group, with no prior experiences of abuse. Horses were presented with counterbalanced photographs of positive and negative human facial expressions, and their behavioural responses were recorded. Our results indicated that horses with previous experiences of abuse were more likely to hold a pessimistic bias, involving a diminished anticipation of positive events (decreased optimism), and an increased occurrence of stress-related behaviours. Alongside the insights that these findings provide into inter-specific communication, they highlight the impact of welfare conditions on domestic horses well-being, cognition, and related behaviours. Presented in absentia on April 27, 2020 at Student Research Day at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta. (Conference cancelled) Faculty Mentor: Shannon Digweed Department: Psychology
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".