Coding for ‘Dynamic’ Information: Vocal Expression of Emotional Arousal and Valence in Non-human Animals

Briefer, Elodie F.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-39200-0_6

Cited by 32 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 132 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The observation that shorter vocalizations are associated with positive emotions corroborates previous finding in domestic pigs 17,18,20,21,27 , as well as wild boars 28 . This association appears to be a common pattern among the species in which the effect of valence on vocalizations has been studied so far 10,11 . In addition, this pattern does not seem to be due to a confounding effect of emotional arousal, which could result from positive contexts included in our analyses being associated with an overall lower emotional arousal compared to negative contexts, since it is observed also in studies in which arousal has been controlled (e.g.…”

Section: Effect Of Valence and Context On Specific Vocal Parametersmentioning

confidence: 69%

“…Due to the impact of emotions on vocalization, the analysis of vocal expression of emotions is increasingly being considered as an important non-invasive tool to assess the affective aspects of animal welfare 9,10 . In the last decade, it has been shown that vocalizations of various animal species produced in specific emotional contexts and/or physiological states display specific acoustic characteristics [10][11][12] . Furthermore, systems for automatic acoustic recognition of physiological and stress states have already been developed for cattle 13,14 and pigs 15 .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Classification of pig calls produced from birth to slaughter according to their emotional valence and context of production

Briefer

Sypherd

Linhart

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Vocal expression of emotions has been observed across species and could provide a non-invasive and reliable means to assess animal emotions. We investigated if pig vocal indicators of emotions revealed in previous studies are valid across call types and contexts, and could potentially be used to develop an automated emotion monitoring tool. We performed an analysis of an extensive and unique dataset of low (LF) and high frequency (HF) calls emitted by pigs across numerous commercial contexts from birth to slaughter (7414 calls from 411 pigs). Our results revealed that the valence attributed to the contexts of production (positive versus negative) affected all investigated parameters in both LF and HF. Similarly, the context category affected all parameters. We then tested two different automated methods for call classification; a neural network revealed much higher classification accuracy compared to a permuted discriminant function analysis (pDFA), both for the valence (neural network: 91.5%; pDFA analysis weighted average across LF and HF (cross-classified): 61.7% with a chance level at 50.5%) and context (neural network: 81.5%; pDFA analysis weighted average across LF and HF (cross-classified): 19.4% with a chance level at 14.3%). These results suggest that an automated recognition system can be developed to monitor pig welfare on-farm.

show abstract

Section: Effect Of Valence and Context On Specific Vocal Parametersmentioning

confidence: 69%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Classification of pig calls produced from birth to slaughter according to their emotional valence and context of production

Briefer

Sypherd

Linhart

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We found that the presence of chaos in puppy whines, but not the addition of frequency jumps, sidebands, or subharmonics, increased perceptions of distress in human listeners representing the general population. From a biomechanical perspective, the production of NLP, particularly chaos, is typically associated with high subglottal pressure and strong muscle tension on vocal folds [39]—configurations of the vocal apparatus that are likely to arise in distressed animals with highly aroused physiological states [1]. Chaos is indeed a characteristic of calls associated with distress in a wide range of mammals [10,15,16,21,23] (this study).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nonlinear vocal phenomena affect human perceptions of distress, size and dominance in puppy whines

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While nonlinear phenomena (NLP) are widely reported in animal vocalizations, often causing perceptual harshness and roughness, their communicative function remains debated. Several hypotheses have been put forward: attention-grabbing, communication of distress, exaggeration of body size and dominance. Here, we use state-of-the-art sound synthesis to investigate how NLP affect the perception of puppy whines by human listeners. Listeners assessed the distress, size or dominance conveyed by synthetic puppy whines with manipulated NLP, including frequency jumps and varying proportions of subharmonics, sidebands and deterministic chaos. We found that the presence of chaos increased the puppy's perceived level of distress and that this effect held across a range of representative fundamental frequency ( f o ) levels. Adding sidebands and subharmonics also increased perceived distress among listeners who have extensive caregiving experience with pre-weaned puppies (e.g. breeders, veterinarians). Finally, we found that whines with added chaos, subharmonics or sidebands were associated with larger and more dominant puppies, although these biases were attenuated in experienced caregivers. Together, our results show that nonlinear phenomena in puppy whines can convey rich information to human listeners and therefore may be crucial for offspring survival during breeding of a domesticated species.

show abstract

“…A similar decrease in the energy quartiles and/or formants from negative to positive emotions can be observed in Przewalski’s horses [ 19 ], domestic horses [ 27 ], and squirrel monkeys [ 42 ]. In addition, a decrease in duration from negative to positive situations seems to be common across species [ 7 , 20 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, whether this also applies to vocal indicators of valence remains unknown, since these indicators have been investigated in only a few species, and rarely in closely related species (but see [ 19 ]). So far, it seems that across several species, calls associated with positive emotions tend to be shorter, with a lower and less variable fundamental frequency (F0), compared to those associated with negative emotions [ 7 , 20 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Encoding of Emotional Valence in Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) Calls

Maigrot

Hillmann

Briefer

2018

Animals

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Simple SummaryAnimal welfare today is assessed based on both the physical and mental health of animals. However, measuring animal mental health, which includes emotions (i.e., short-term positive or negative reactions to specific events), remains a challenge. Since animals are known to use vocalizations to communicate their emotions to their peers, knowledge about how the structure of vocalizations changes with emotions could be very useful in order to develop noninvasive indicators for assessing animal welfare under captive conditions. The aim of this study was thus to investigate if the type of calls (i.e., grunt, scream, or squeal) or the acoustic structure of the calls emitted by captive wild boars changed according to the emotions they were experiencing. We found that wild boars used different types of calls in positive and negative situations. We also found that their acoustic structure changed according to the emotions. Indeed, calls produced in positive situations were generally shorter and at lower frequencies than those produced in negative situations. It thus seems that wild boars express their emotional state through their vocalizations. Overall, our study gives us better knowledge about how the emotions of captive wild boars could be assessed, and how this compares to domestic pigs.AbstractMeasuring emotions in nonhuman mammals is challenging. As animals are not able to verbally report how they feel, we need to find reliable indicators to assess their emotional state. Emotions can be described using two key dimensions: valence (negative or positive) and arousal (bodily activation or excitation). In this study, we investigated vocal expression of emotional valence in wild boars (Sus scrofa). The animals were observed in three naturally occurring situations: anticipation of a food reward (positive), affiliative interactions (positive), and agonistic interactions (negative). Body movement was used as an indicator of emotional arousal to control for the effect of this dimension. We found that screams and squeals were mostly produced during negative situations, and grunts during positive situations. Additionally, the energy quartiles, duration, formants, and harmonicity indicated valence across call types and situations. The mean of the first and second formants also indicated valence, but varied according to the call type. Our results suggest that wild boars can vocally express their emotional states. Some of these indicators could allow us to identify the emotional valence that wild boars are experiencing during vocal production and thus inform us about their welfare.

show abstract

Coding for ‘Dynamic’ Information: Vocal Expression of Emotional Arousal and Valence in Non-human Animals

Cited by 32 publications

References 132 publications

Classification of pig calls produced from birth to slaughter according to their emotional valence and context of production

Classification of pig calls produced from birth to slaughter according to their emotional valence and context of production

Nonlinear vocal phenomena affect human perceptions of distress, size and dominance in puppy whines

Encoding of Emotional Valence in Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) Calls

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About