Consciousness, emotion and animal welfare: insights from cognitive science

By M. Mendl, Elizabeth S. Paul. Animal Welfare, 2004

199 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The assumption that animals are conscious and capable of experiencing negative sensations and emotions is at the core of most people's concerns about animal welfare. Investigation of this central assumption should be one goal of animal welfare science. We argue that theory and techniques from cognitive science offer promising ways forward. Evidence for the existence of conscious and non-conscious cognitive processing in humans has inspired scientists to search for comparable processes in animals. In studies of metacognition and blindsight, some species show behaviour that has functional parallels with human conscious cognitive processing. Although unable to definitively answer the question of whether the animals are conscious, these studies provide fresh insights, and some could be adapted for domestic animals. They mark a departure from the search for cognitive complexity as an indicator of consciousness, which is based on questionable assumptions linking the two. Accurate assessment of animal emotion is crucial in animal welfare research, and cognitive science offers novel approaches that address some limitations of current measures. Knowledge of the relationship between cognition and emotion in humans generates a priori frameworks for interpreting traditional physiological and behavioural indicators of animal emotion, and provides new measures (eg cognitive bias) that gauge positive as well as negative emotions. Conditioning paradigms can be used to enable animals to indicate their emotional state through operant responses. Although evidence for animal consciousness and emotion will necessarily be indirect, insights from cognitive science promise further advances in our understanding of this fundamentally important area in animal welfare science.

Subfields: Genetics, Sensory Systems, Small Animals

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8bf88161b4bd6a9aa48f2c15b5f8efd8575cef69

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Citations in the corpus

Cognitive enrichment affects behavioural reactivity in domestic pigs (2007, background): “…and situations are linked with emotional states which again may affect positively or negatively other behavioural and physiological parameters of welfare and health (Mendl, 1999; Spruijt et al., 2001; Dantzer, 2002; Désiré et al., 2002; Puppe, 2003; Mendl and Paul, 2004; Paul et al., 2005).”
Assessment of positive emotions in animals to improve their welfare. (2007, background): “It is not our purpose to discuss the links between cognition and consciousness [reviewed by [22]], but we want to stress the usefulness of cognitive science for research on emotions in animals and thus for animal welfare.”
Cognitive bias in a non-human primate: husbandry procedures influence cognitive indicators of psychological well-being in captive rhesus macaques (2012, methodology): “A particularly promising development in this area has been the 45 emergence of ‘cognitive bias’ as an indicator of animal psychological wellbeing (Harding et 46 al 2004; Mendl & Paul 2004; Paul et al 2005; Mendl et al 2009, 2010a).”
Thinking Pigs: A Comparative Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Personality in Sus domesticus (2015, background): “Emotions are comprised of behavioral, neurophysiological, cognitive and conscious subjective processes (Mendl & Paul, 2004; Paul, Harding, & Mendl, 2005) and can interact with other processes by shaping attention, decision-making, and memory.”
Larger, enriched cages are associated with 'optimistic' response biases in captive European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) (2008, background): “Based on these findings Paul et al. (2005) have argued that measures of cognitive bias my offer potential advantages as measures of affective state in animals.”
The Science of Animal Suffering (2008, unknown): “Q20 Au: Mendl & Paul (2004) not cited.”
Performance on a categorisation task suggests that removal of environmental enrichment induces ‘pessimism’ in captive European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) (2007, background): “First, it is possible that cognitive bias may be better than some measures at assessing the valence (pleasantness versus unpleasantness) of an emotion as opposed to just the level of arousal (Paul et al 2005).”
Cognitive bias as an indicator of animal emotion and welfare: Emerging evidence and underlying mechanisms (2009, background): “suffer or experience pleasure (Dawkins, 1990; Mendl, 2001; Mendl and Paul, 2004; Boissy et al., 2007).”
Measuring emotional processes in animals: the utility of a cognitive approach. (2005, unknown): “Cognitive components of emotion are a relatively unexplored potential additional source of information about animal emotions [65,247].”
Can domestic fowl, Gallus gallus domesticus, show self-control? (2005, background): “A central assumption of animal welfare is the capacity of animals for basic conscious experience, i.e. subjective awareness of sensations and emotions (Dawkins 2001; Mendl & Paul 2004).”
The emergence of emotional lateralization: Evidence in non-human vertebrates and implications for farm animals (2013, unknown): “Indeed, the assumption that animals are sentient beings, capable of experiencing emotions, such as fear, frustration and pleasure, lies at the base of animal-welfare science and protection (e.g. European Union, 1997; Mendl and Paul, 2004; Špinka, 2012).”
A spatial judgement task to determine background emotional state in laboratory rats, Rattus norvegicus (2008, background): “Furthermore, the assumption that animals experience emotional states is likely to underpin public concern about animal welfare, and investigations of such states are thus of central importance in animal welfare science (e.g. Dawkins, 1990; Mendl & Paul, 2004; Dawkins, 2006).”
Pigs learn what a mirror image represents and use it to obtain information (2009, background): “Mendl and Paul (2004, 2008) 60 discuss “basic awareness” of sensations, feelings, emotions and memories.”
Cognitive ability and awareness in domestic animals and decisions about obligations to animals (2010, background): “Mendl and Paul (2004, 2008) discuss basic awareness of sensations, feelings, emotions and memories.”