Toward a Choice-Based Judgment Bias Task for Horses

Hintze, Sara Anna Elisabet; Roth, Emma; Bachmann, Iris; Würbel, Hanno (2017). Toward a Choice-Based Judgment Bias Task for Horses. Journal of applied animal welfare science, 20(2), pp. 123-136. Taylor & Francis 10.1080/10888705.2016.1276834

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Judgment bias tasks for nonhuman animals are promising tools to assess emotional valence as a measure of animal welfare. In view of establishing a valid judgment bias task for horses, the present study aimed to evaluate 2 versions (go/no-go and active choice) of an auditory judgment bias task for horses in terms of acquisition learning and discrimination of ambiguous cues. Five mares and 5 stallions were randomly assigned to the 2 designs and trained for 10 trials per day to acquire different operant responses to a low-frequency tone and a high-frequency tone, respectively. Following acquisition learning, horses were tested on 4 days with 3 ambiguous-tone trials interspersed between the 10 high-tone and low-tone trials. All 5 go/ no-go horses but only one active-choice horse successfully learned their task, indicating that it is more difficult to train horses on an active choice task than on a go/no-go task. During testing, however, go/no-go horses did not differentiate between the 3 different ambiguous cues, thereby making the validity of the test results questionable in terms of emotional valence.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

05 Veterinary Medicine > Department of Clinical Research and Veterinary Public Health (DCR-VPH) > Veterinary Public Health Institute > Animal Welfare Division
05 Veterinary Medicine > Department of Clinical Research and Veterinary Public Health (DCR-VPH) > Veterinary Public Health Institute
05 Veterinary Medicine > Department of Clinical Research and Veterinary Public Health (DCR-VPH)

UniBE Contributor:

Hintze, Sara Anna Elisabet, Würbel, Hanno

ISSN:

1088-8705

Publisher:

Taylor & Francis

Language:

English

Submitter:

Jeremy Davidson Bailoo

Date Deposited:

14 Aug 2017 14:55

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:02

Publisher DOI:

10.1080/10888705.2016.1276834

PubMed ID:

28139164

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.94912

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/94912

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