Valence Scores Research Articles

Study in murine model: Is there a relationship between presbycusis and frailty?

Age-related hearing loss (ARHL) or Presbycusis is the most frequent sensory deficiency in older adults and is associated with comorbidities, such as falls, cognitive decline, and frailty. Frailty is related to poor health outcomes in old age. Recent research suggested that ARHL may be a potentially modifiable risk factor for frailty, although inconclusive. The use of animal models to study the correlation between ARHL and frailty is important to test future interventions to be translated into clinical practice. The aim of this study was to determine if there is an association between ARHL and frailty in experimental animals based on the human frailty phenotype. This research studied male and female C57Bl/6J mice, at different ages (6, 14, and 22 months). Auditory steady-state responses (ASSR) threshold shifts were measured at different frequencies. To assess frailty status, we were based on the "Valence Score" which consists of measuring: weakness, weight loss, low level of activity, slowness, and little resistance. We found that hearing is significantly lower in older age groups. The mice become frail as they age. The worsening in ASSR threshold shifts with age correlates significantly with an increasing frailty. No significant differences were found between both sexes. Our research is, to our knowledge, the first carried out in experimental animals to establish the association between ARHL and frailty, which would provide a useful tool to evaluate future interventions in mice before translating them into clinical practice.

Self-talk valence and motivational orientation for entrepreneurship: an exploratory study

ABSTRACT Self-talk is a well-researched component of self-efficacy that is frequently used as a motivational tool in sports. This study investigated how self-talk, as a component of entrepreneurship self-efficacy, relates to entrepreneurial motivation orientation. An online survey measured the self-talk valence of twenty-four entrepreneurs. Subsequently, interviews were conducted with the same entrepreneurs to collect narratives of their entrepreneurship start-up. The interview data were thematically coded and analysed. Links between the entrepreneurship motivation and the entrepreneurs’ net self-talk valence scores were plotted. The analysis suggests that those with positive self-talk typically had intrinsic motivation orientations, while those with negative scores had shared extrinsic motivational orientations. Contrary to the association of positive self-talk with motivation in sports, counterintuitively, negative self-talk’s link with motivation presents a novel finding. This finding is explained using the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ theories of entrepreneurial motivation. The study recommends deductive testing for this inductively explored relationship.

Multimodal analysis of temporal affective variability within treatment for depression.

Affective flexibility, the capacity to respond to life's varying environmental changes in a dynamic and adaptive manner, is considered a central aspect of psychological health in many psychotherapeutic approaches. The present study examined whether affective two-dimensional (i.e., arousal and valence) temporal variability extracted from voice and facial expressions would be associated with positive changes over the course of psychotherapy, at the session, client, and treatment levels. A total of 22,741 mean vocal arousal and facial expression valence observations were extracted from 137 therapy sessions in a sample of 30 clients treated for major depressive disorder by nine therapists. Before and after each session, the clients self-reported their level of well-being on the outcome rating scale. Session-level affective temporal variability was assessed as the mean square of successive differences between consecutive two-dimensional affective measures. Session outcome was positively associated with temporal variability at the session level (i.e., within clients, between sessions) and at the client level (i.e., between clients). Importantly, these associations held when controlling for average session- and client-level valence scores. In addition, the expansion of temporal variability throughout treatment was associated with steeper positive session outcome trajectories over the course of treatment. The continuous assessment of both vocal and facial affective expressions and the ability to extract measures of affective temporal variability from within-session data may enable therapists to better respond and modulate clients' affective flexibility; however, further research is necessary to determine whether there is a causal link between affective temporal variability and psychotherapy outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Comparing the efficacy of online vs. offline methods in modulating emotional responses through mental stress tasks

Emotion regulation and stress represent two complex, intertwined processes. Yet, there is a paucity of studies examining the effect of stress on emotional regulation among Vietnamese students, specifically the influence of online and offline experimental conditions. This study investigates these dynamics by subjective assessment of the emotional responses of the subjects participating in this study. The research was structured in three primary phases: preliminary, online (conducted via the Internet), and offline (conducted in person) experiments. The preliminary phase (N=16) aimed to validate the appropriateness of the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) picture library and emotional stimulation videos from previous studies. Participants in the online (N=30) and offline (N=45) experiments were divided into control and stress groups, distinguished by the difficulty and urgency of the mental arithmetic task (MAT). Participants were then asked to view photos and videos and to rate their subjective feelings using the Self-assessment Manikin (SAM). The online experimental session revealed that subjects under acute stress exhibited heightened sensitivity, as indicated by increased valence scores in the positive and neutral groups, and decreased scores for negative imagery (Positive: MD=0.292, p=0.0113; Neutral: MD=0.245, p=0.001; Negative: MD=-0.435, p<0.0001). An increase in arousal scores in the stress group was also observed for positive (p<0.0001) and neutral sets (p<0.0001). However, these findings were not replicated in the offline experiment session. In conclusion, the IAPS pictures have proven suitable for emotional studies among Vietnamese students.

Dimensional Measures of Psychopathology in Children and Adolescents Using Large Language Models

BackgroundTo enable greater use of National Institute of Mental Health Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) in real-world settings, we applied large language models (LLMs) to estimate dimensional psychopathology from narrative clinical notes. MethodsWe conducted a cohort study using health records from individuals age ≤18 years evaluated in the psychiatric emergency department of a large academic medical center between November 2008 and March 2015. Outcomes were hospital admission and length of emergency department stay. RDoC domains were estimated using a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act–compliant LLM (gpt-4-1106-preview) and compared with a previously validated token-based approach. ResultsThe cohort included 3059 individuals (median age 16 years [interquartile range, 13–18]; 1580 [52%] female, 1479 [48%] male; 105 [3.4%] identified as Asian, 329 [11%] as Black, 288 [9.4%] as Hispanic, 474 [15%] as other race, and 1863 [61%] as White), of whom 1695 (55%) were admitted. Correlation between LLM-extracted RDoC scores and the token-based scores ranged from small to medium as assessed by Kendall’s tau (0.14–0.22). In logistic regression models adjusting for sociodemographic and clinical features, admission likelihood was associated with greater scores on all domains, with the exception of the sensorimotor domain, which was inversely associated (p < .001 for all adjusted associations). Tests for bias suggested modest but statistically significant differences in positive valence scores by race (p < .05 for Asian, Black, and Hispanic individuals). ConclusionsAn LLM extracted estimates of 6 RDoC domains in an explainable manner, which were associated with clinical outcomes. This approach can contribute to a new generation of prediction models or biological investigations based on dimensional psychopathology.

The Role of Coherent Robot Behavior and Embodiment in Emotion Perception and Recognition During Human-Robot Interaction: Experimental Study.

Social robots are becoming increasingly important as companions in our daily lives. Consequently, humans expect to interact with them using the same mental models applied to human-human interactions, including the use of cospeech gestures. Research efforts have been devoted to understanding users' needs and developing robot's behavioral models that can perceive the user state and properly plan a reaction. Despite the efforts made, some challenges regarding the effect of robot embodiment and behavior in the perception of emotions remain open. The aim of this study is dual. First, it aims to assess the role of the robot's cospeech gestures and embodiment in the user's perceived emotions in terms of valence (stimulus pleasantness), arousal (intensity of evoked emotion), and dominance (degree of control exerted by the stimulus). Second, it aims to evaluate the robot's accuracy in identifying positive, negative, and neutral emotions displayed by interacting humans using 3 supervised machine learning algorithms: support vector machine, random forest, and K-nearest neighbor. Pepper robot was used to elicit the 3 emotions in humans using a set of 60 images retrieved from a standardized database. In particular, 2 experimental conditions for emotion elicitation were performed with Pepper robot: with a static behavior or with a robot that expresses coherent (COH) cospeech behavior. Furthermore, to evaluate the role of the robot embodiment, the third elicitation was performed by asking the participant to interact with a PC, where a graphical interface showed the same images. Each participant was requested to undergo only 1 of the 3 experimental conditions. A total of 60 participants were recruited for this study, 20 for each experimental condition for a total of 3600 interactions. The results showed significant differences (P<.05) in valence, arousal, and dominance when stimulated with the Pepper robot behaving COH with respect to the PC condition, thus underlying the importance of the robot's nonverbal communication and embodiment. A higher valence score was obtained for the elicitation of the robot (COH and robot with static behavior) with respect to the PC. For emotion recognition, the K-nearest neighbor classifiers achieved the best accuracy results. In particular, the COH modality achieved the highest level of accuracy (0.97) when compared with the static behavior and PC elicitations (0.88 and 0.94, respectively). The results suggest that the use of multimodal communication channels, such as cospeech and visual channels, as in the COH modality, may improve the recognition accuracy of the user's emotional state and can reinforce the perceived emotion. Future studies should investigate the effect of age, culture, and cognitive profile on the emotion perception and recognition going beyond the limitation of this work.

Development and validation of the trauma-specific emotional counting Stroop paradigm for fMRI study

BackgroundThe emotional-counting Stroop (ecStroop) is a cognitive task to evaluate emotional information processing. This study aimed to develop a trauma-specific ecStroop protocol for firefighters and assess its validity as a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activation paradigm. MethodsTo develop the ecStroop protocol, trauma-related words for firefighters were selected from previous studies, and general negative and neutral words were matched corresponding to the number of letters and syllables, parts of speech, and frequency in the Korean language. The negative emotional valence of whole words was investigated in 520 healthy participants. To compare brain activation between three categories, 25 healthy individuals underwent fMRI during the ecStroop task. ResultsEight trauma-related words, eight general negative words, and sixteen neutral words were selected by emotional valence scores. The general negative words were related to increased activation in the right inferior and middle temporal gyrus, right medial frontal gyrus, and left superior frontal gyrus compared to the neutral words. When exposed to the trauma-related words, participants' brain activation was increased in the right inferior temporal gyrus, right medial frontal gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus, and left inferior frontal gyrus as compared to when exposed to the neutral words. LimitationsThe fact that all participants in the phase 2 fMRI study were male could limit generalization to all genders. ConclusionsThese findings suggest that the ecStroop paradigm successfully activated the brain regions for emotional processing. This paradigm could be valuable in assessing the trauma-specific neural changes in firefighters.

Capturing mood dynamics through adolescent smartphone social communication.

Most adolescents with depression remain undiagnosed and untreated-missed opportunities that are costly from both personal and public health perspectives. A promising approach to detecting adolescent depression in real-time and at a large scale is through their social communication on the smartphone (e.g., text messages, social media posts). Past research has shown that language from online social communication reliably indicates interindividual differences in depression. To move toward detecting the emergence of depression symptoms intraindividually, the present study tested whether sentiment (i.e., words connoting positive and negative affect) from smartphone social communication prospectively predicted daily mood fluctuations in 83 adolescents (Mage = 16.49, 73.5% female) with a wide range of depression severity. Participants completed daily mood ratings across a 90-day period, during which 354,278 messages were passively collected from social communication apps. Greater positive sentiment (i.e., more positive weighted composite valence score and a greater proportion of words expressing positive sentiment) predicted more positive next-day mood, controlling for previous-day mood. Moreover, greater proportions of positive and negative sentiment were, respectively, associated with lower anhedonia and greater dysphoria symptoms measured at baseline. Exploratory analyses of nonaffective linguistic features showed that greater use of social engagement words (e.g., friends and affiliation) and emojis (primarily consisting of hearts) predicted more positive changes in mood. Collectively, findings suggest that language from smartphone social communication can detect mood fluctuations in adolescents, laying the foundation for language-based tools to identify periods of heightened depression risk. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Facial EMG startle response and self-report reactions after exposure to severely underweight and severely obese body images in individuals with disordered eating: An examination of motivational responses

Examining appetitive and aversive responses toward body image stimuli of those with disordered eating may illuminate motivational systems unique to eating pathology. The current study extended previous literature by examining self-report and startle responses to a range of body sizes. In this cross-sectional design, female, adult participants (n = 45) were sorted into disordered eating (DE; n = 22) and healthy control (HC; n = 23) groups based on Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire global scores that were one standard deviation above or below normative values. Participants viewed eight computer-generated female body pictures from each group: severely underweight (BMI < 16.0), average (BMI 18.5–24.99), and severely obese (BMI > 40.0). Startle responses and self-reported valence and anxiety scores were collected to assess implicit and explicit reactions. 2 × 3 ANCOVA/ANOVAs were used to examine startle responses and self-report differences between groups, in response to image types. Results indicated startle responses did not differ between groups. There was a significant main effect for body picture type (p < .001), after controlling for psychotropic medication. Startle responses were higher for severely underweight body images compared to severely obese body images, although non-significant at post-hoc. The DE group reported higher levels of anxiety and sadness when viewing body images compared to the HC group. Average bodies were rated as less anxiety provoking and more positive than severely underweight and obese bodies. Group differences in anxiety and valence scores could be due to more maladaptive cognitions related to fear of weight gain among people with disordered eating.

Examining the role of mood in pain-limited treadmill walking duration in young healthy individuals.

The purpose of the study was to examine the effects of acute mood modulation on treadmill walking duration during experimental pain application. This was a repeated measure, within-subject study design. 30 healthy individuals (Males: Females 16:14; age 22.9 ± 2.5 years; height 170.9 ± 9.5 cm; body mass 68.4 ± 14.6 kg) attended a familiarization session and three experimental sessions, whereby they simultaneously viewed emotionally evoking stimulus from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) and performed two treadmill walking tests (maximum 10 min duration) with a fixed nociceptive input applied to the thigh (pressure cuff). The primary outcome was treadmill walking duration during pain application to achieve a fixed pain score. During walking, mood (Self-Assessment Manikin: SAM 0-9) and pain (numerical rating scale: NRS 0-10) were measured. Mood valence scores were significantly different in all conditions (p < 0.001), negative (2.4 ± 0.3), neutral (4.9 ± 0.6) and positive (6.6 ± 0.3). There was a significant difference (p = 0.04) in the treadmill walking duration for different mood states. For the primary outcome, post hoc analysis found differences between the negative and positive mood conditions for the treadmill walking durations to reach pain scores of 3 (negative: 224 ± 49 s; positive: 259 ± 60s, effect size [ES]: 0.80), 4 (negative: 262 ± 59 s; positive: 326 ± 90s, ES: 0.92), 5 (negative: 313 ± 86 s; positive: 385 ± 113 s, ES: 0.90), 6 (negative: 367 ± 106 s; positive: 447 ± 113 s, ES: 1.04) and 7 (negative: 423 ± 114 s; positive: 521 ± 110 s, ES: 1.02). There was no significant difference in the treadmill walking duration between the neutral vs negative mood and neutral vs positive mood conditions. These results highlight the potential psychophysiological impacts on the pain experience in healthy individuals and encourages pursuit in strategies to minimize pain-limited exercise, a highly prevalent issue in the chronic pain population. Walking-based rehabilitation, designed to improve physical activity, has been shown to improve pain and disability. However active participation and adherence in walking-based rehabilitation has shown to be jeopardized by pain and pain-related cognitive and behavioural adaptations. This study examined the effect of a shift in mood on pain perception and treadmill walking tolerance. We found that with a worse mood, individuals were less tolerant of pain and walked on the treadmill for a shorter duration. These results suggest that factors which improve mood should be combined with walking-based training to improve tolerance.

Comparing Emotional Valence Scores of Twitter Messages from Human Coding and Machine Learning Algorithms Among Hispanic and African American Family Caregivers of Persons with Dementia.

We compared emotional valence scores as determined via machine learning approaches to human-coded scores of direct messages on Twitter from our 2,301 followers during a Twitter-based clinical trial screening for Hispanic and African American family caregivers of persons with dementia. We manually assigned emotional valence scores to 249 randomly selected direct Twitter messages from our followers (N=2,301), then we applied three machine learning sentiment analysis algorithms to extract emotional valence scores for each message and compared their mean scores to the human coding results. The aggregated mean emotional scores from the natural language processing were slightly positive, while the mean score from human coding as a gold standard was negative. Clusters of strongly negative sentiments were observed in followers' responses to being found non-eligible for the study, indicating a significant need for alternative strategies to provide similar research opportunities to non-eligible family caregivers.

Validation of the Edited Tromsø Infant Faces Database (E-TIF): A study on differences in the processing of children's emotional expressions

Images of emotional facial expressions are often used in emotion research, which has promoted the development of different databases. However, most of these standardized sets of images do not include images from infants under 2 years of age, which is relevant for psychology research, especially for perinatal psychology. The present study aims to validate the edited version of the Tromsø Infant Faces Database (E-TIF) in a large sample of participants. The original set of 119 pictures was edited. The pictures were cropped to remove nonrelevant information, fitted in an oval window, and converted to grayscale. Four hundred and eighty participants (72.9% women) took part in the study, rating the images on five dimensions: depicted emotion, clarity, intensity, valence, and genuineness. Valence scores were useful for discriminating between positive, negative, and neutral facial expressions. Results revealed that women were more accurate at recognizing emotions in children. Regarding parental status, parents, in comparison with nonparents, rated neutral expressions as more intense and genuine. They also rated sad, angry, disgusted, and fearful faces as less negative, and happy expressions as less positive. The editing and validation of the E-TIF database offers a useful tool for basic and experimental research in psychology.

My point of view: Students with intellectual and communicative disabilities express their views on speech and reading using Talking Mats

AbstractBackgroundIt can be challenging for people with intellectual disabilities to convey their thoughts and opinions because of cognitive, speech and language impairments. Consequently, facilitating their ability to communicate using augmentative and alternative communication methods is essential. The picture‐based framework Talking Mats has been applied in many studies and has been shown to be successful in facilitating communication and soliciting views from individuals with intellectual disabilities and communication difficulties. The aim of this study was to describe the views of students with intellectual disabilities and communication difficulties on speech and reading activities and to examine whether valence scores (from negative to positive) on these views were associated with performance on tests of their corresponding abilities.MethodsThis is a cross‐sectional quantitative survey study. A group of 111 students with intellectual disabilities and communication difficulties aged 7–21 were interviewed about their speech and reading activities using the visual framework Talking Mats. Their answers were scored on a three‐grade like‐dislike continuum and were correlated with their results on adapted tests of the corresponding abilities.FindingsThe students expressed their views on speech and reading activities. The scored views on speech were positively associated with speech production, and the scored views on reading activities were positively related to reading ability. This suggests that their opinions as expressed through Talking Mats were consistent and reliable.ConclusionsMost students with intellectual disabilities and communicative difficulties can reliably express their own opinions of their abilities when they are provided with a clear visual structure and pictorial support, such as Talking Mats. In this study, this was seen for students with a mild intellectual disability from age seven and onwards and for students with a more severe intellectual disability from 12 years of age and onwards.

A pilot study investigating affective forecasting biases with a novel virtual reality-based paradigm

A body of research indicates that people are prone to overestimate the affective impact of future events. Here, we developed a novel experimental paradigm to study these affective forecasting biases under laboratory conditions using subjective (arousal and valence) and autonomic measures (skin conductance responses, SCRs, and heart rate). Thirty participants predicted their emotional responses to 15 unpleasant, 15 neutral, and 15 pleasant scenarios (affective forecasting phase) to which they were then exposed in virtual reality (emotional experience phase). Results showed that participants anticipated more extreme arousal and valence scores than they actually experienced for unpleasant and pleasant scenarios. The emotional experience phase was characterized by classic autonomic patterns, i.e., higher SCRs for emotionally arousing scenarios and greater peak cardiac acceleration for pleasant scenarios. During the affective forecasting phase, we found only a moderate association between arousal scores and SCRs and no valence-dependent modulation of cardiac activity. This paradigm opens up new perspectives for investigating affective forecasting abilities under lab-controlled conditions, notably in psychiatric disorders with anxious anticipations.

Turning words into numbers: Assessing work attitudes using natural language processing.

Researchers and practitioners are often interested in assessing employee attitudes and work perceptions. Although such perceptions are typically measured using Likert surveys or some other closed-end numerical rating format, many organizations also have access to large amounts of qualitative employee data. For example, open-ended comments from employee surveys allow workers to provide rich and contextualized perspectives about work. Unfortunately, there are practical challenges when trying to understand employee perceptions from qualitative data. Given this, the present study investigated whether natural language processing (NLP) algorithms could be developed to automatically score employee comments according to important work attitudes and perceptions. Using a large sample of employees, algorithms were developed to translate text into scores that reflect what comments were about (theme scores) and how positively targeted constructs were described (valence scores) for 28 work constructs. The resulting algorithms and scores are labeled the Text-Based Attitude and Perception Scoring (TAPS) dictionaries, which are made publicly available and were built using a mix of count-based scoring and transformer neural networks. The psychometric properties of the TAPS scores were then investigated. Results showed that theme scores differentiated responses based on their likelihood to discuss specific constructs. Additionally, valence scores exhibited strong evidence of reliability and validity, particularly, when analyzed on text responses that were more relevant to the construct of interest. This suggests that researchers and practitioners should explicitly design text prompts to elicit construct-related information if they wish to accurately assess work attitudes and perceptions via NLP. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotional arousal and valence in patients with fibromyalgia: a pilot study.

The pathogenesis of pain in fibromyalgia is still not completely understood. A disrupted emotional modulation could affect the physiology of nociception and contributes to an altered perception of pain. The aim of this study was to test the role of emotional arousal and valence in pain susceptibility in fibromyalgia using the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) paradigm and the Fibromyalgia Severity Scale (FSS). The study focused on comparing emotional arousal and valence between patients with fibromyalgia and the control group. The secondary objective was to examine the correlation between emotional indices and scores on the FSS and the duration of the disease. The 20 patients with fibromyalgia enrolled showed a higher mean arousal score for all the stimuli, including a higher score for unpleasant and socially unpleasant stimuli. The valence scores for social-relevant stimuli were also higher. Increased arousal to unpleasant and socially unpleasant images and increased valence of them correlated with the duration of the disease and the severity of symptoms and could reflect impairment in social cognition and marked sensitivity to pain in interaction with central nociceptive dysregulation.

Exploring effects of response biases in affect induction procedures.

This study examined whether self-reports or ratings of experienced affect, often used as manipulation checks on the efficacy of affect induction procedures (AIPs), reflect genuine changes in affective states rather than response biases arising from demand characteristics or social desirability effects. In a between-participants design, participants were exposed to positive, negative and neutral images with valence-congruent music or sound to induce happy, sad and neutral mood. Half of the participants had to actively appraise each image whereas the other half viewed images passively. We hypothesised that if ratings of affective valence are subject to response biases then they should reflect the target mood in the same way for active appraisal and passive exposure as participants encountered the same affective stimuli in both conditions. We also tested whether the AIP resulted in mood-congruent changes in facial expressions analysed by FaceReader to see whether behavioural indicators corroborate the self-reports. The results showed that while participants' ratings reflected the induced target valence, the difference between positive and negative AIP was significantly attenuated in the active appraisal condition, suggesting that self-reports of mood experienced after the AIP are not entirely a reflection of response biases. However, there were no effects of the AIP on FaceReader valence scores, in line with theories questioning the existence of cross-culturally and inter-individually universal behavioural indicators of affective states. Efficacy of AIPs is therefore best checked using self-reports.

Qualitative Behaviour Assessment for zoo-housed polar bears (Ursus maritimus): Intra- and inter-day consistency and association to other indicators of welfare

Contemporary zoos house polar bears (Ursus maritimus) to serve the conservation efforts of these institutions. However, evidence of behavioural problems in captivity has highlighted the need for methods to assess polar bear welfare, why valid and feasible animal-based welfare indicators are a prerequisite. Qualitative Behaviour Assessment (QBA) has been used to assess emotional state in various species. This study therefore aimed to assess the ability of QBA to discern emotional state in zoo-housed polar bears, and further to investigate its validity through associations to behavioural and health-related indicators, as well as intra- and inter-day consistency of QBA scores. A list of 24 terms was developed by reviewing the literature and on-site assessments. Reliability of the list was tested through Kendall’s W between two assessors (Inter-OR), as well as over time (Intra-OR), based on videos. QBAs and behavioural observations were collected on 22 polar bears from nine zoos in four European countries, repeated within days (three times) and across days (four days). Behavioural observations were summarized as percentage of time spent in the respective categories, whereas behavioural diversity was expressed by the Shannon Index. Health-related indicators were expressed as an overall dichotomous value (presence/absence). Principal component analysis revealed two main components categorised as valence (PC1, 29.5%) and arousal (PC2, 15.1%). Reliability was met for both PCs, with a W of 0.82 for PC1 and 0.68 for PC2 for Inter-OR, and 0.92 for PC1 and 0.89 for PC2 for Intra-OR. PC1 was significantly positively associated with behavioural diversity (p = 0.006), environmental interaction (p = 0.006) and rest (p = 0.005), and inversely with stereotypic behaviour (p < 0.001) and general activity level (p = 0.003). PC2 was significantly positively associated with stereotypic behaviour (p < 0.001), environmental interaction (p = 0.040) and general activity level (p < 0.001), and inversely with awake inactivity (p = 0.002). Valence scores revealed no significant effect of time of day nor day, however a significant effect was found between early to mid-day on arousal scores (p = 0.015). The results provide evidence of sensitivity and some evidence of validity by associations of QBA with other welfare indicators. QBA may therefore potentially serve to assess emotional state in polar bears, needing only to be carried out once in the short term. Although the proposed list may benefit from additional validation and reliability testing, this study takes the first step towards a standardised QBA for polar bears.

Altered Emotion Perception Linked to Structural Brain Differences in Youth With Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia.

Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) is a genetic disorder that results in hormonal imbalances and decreased brain volumes in regions important for emotional processing. To examine whether emotion perception differs between youth with CAH and control youth, and if these differences relate to brain volumes. In this cross-sectional study of 27 youths with CAH (mean age = 12.63 years, 16 female) and 35 age- and sex-matched controls (mean age = 13.03 years, 20 female), each participant rated picture stimuli and completed a 3T structural brain scan. Valence and arousal ratings and reaction times of 61 affective images were assessed. Gray matter volumes were measured by MRI. Youth with CAH had lower valence ratings for negative (P = .007) and neutral (P = .019) images. Controls showed differences in reaction times and arousal ratings across stimuli conditions, but youth with CAH did not. Brain volumes of the right amygdala (P = .025) and left hippocampus (P = .002) were associated with valence ratings. Left rostral middle frontal (P < .001) and right medial orbitofrontal cortex (P = .002) volumes were negatively related to valence scores only in youth with CAH, whereas left medial orbitofrontal cortex (P < .001) volumes were associated with valence scores positively in youth with CAH and negatively in controls. Findings suggest that youth with CAH perceive emotive stimuli as more unpleasant. Decreased brain volumes in the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex are associated with these measures of altered emotion perception in youth with CAH.

Long-Lasting Chews Elicit Positive Emotional States in Dogs during Short Periods of Social Isolation

Dogs may experience negative emotional states when isolated from human caregivers and conspecifics. This study aimed to evaluate how dogs interact with different enrichments during a short period of social isolation, as a first step towards identifying methods for improving their emotional wellbeing. Using a cross-over design, dogs (n = 20) at the Waltham Petcare Science Institute were exposed to four different food-based enrichments while left alone in a familiar room for 20 min: long-lasting chew (Chew), kibble in a treat-dispensing toy (Toy), and kibble dispensed through a smart treat-dispensing device with (Device + Voice) and without (Device) a person talking to the dog. Time spent engaging with each enrichment item and emotional valence and arousal (7-point scale collected every 5-min) were scored from videos. The results of linear mixed models indicated Chew was the most successful enrichment, with dogs having lower arousal scores (p < 0.05 vs. Device and Toy) during the first five minutes of isolation, higher positive valence scores (p < 0.05 vs. all) during the second five minutes of isolation, and spending the most total time engaged (p < 0.01 vs. all). Based on these findings, long-lasting chews should be further explored to assess their impact on dog emotional wellbeing.