Processus d'évaluation et réponses émotionnelles chez les ovins: prévisibilité, contrôlabilité, correspondance aux attentes et contexte social | Appraisal processes and emotional responses in sheep : predictability, controllability, expectations and social context

anglais. The assessment of farm-animal welfare requires a good understanding of the animals' affective experience, including their emotions. Appraisal theories developed in cognitive psychology provide a conceptual framework to study emotions in animals. It considers emotions to be triggered by a cognitive process where the situation is evaluated according to a limited number of elementary criteria. The emotional experience of an animal can be infered from the likely evaluation it makes in a situation and its subsequent behavioural and physiological responses. It is first necessary to know what criteria animals perceive and whether they influence the emotional response. Knowing the criteria used by a species enables inference to the emotions that individuals could experience. An experimental approach has been developed in lambs to identify the range of elementary criteria used by animals and the specific responses triggered by these criteria. We have shown that lambs evaluate an event to which they are exposed according to the event's predictability, its discrepancy from expectations, the ability of the individual to exert control over it and the social context in which it occurs. This evaluation influences the emotional responses of lambs (behavioural and cardiac). Our characterisation of the criteria used by lambs indicates the kind of emotions they could experience. According to our results, lambs could experience happiness in addition to negative emotions such as fear, anger, disgust, despair, rage and boredom. Further studies to consider combinations of criteria would strengthen these results. Implications of cognitive abilities regarding to animal welfare are discussed.

français. Le bien-être animal implique l'état physique mais également l'état mental. Les théories de l'évaluation en psychologie cognitive offrent un cadre conceptuel pour étudier le vécu émotionnel de l'animal qui est inféré de l'évaluation qu'il fait de la situation à laquelle il est confronté, de ses réponses comportementales et physiologiques. Les critères en fonction desquels les animaux évaluent leur environnement doivent être connus afin d'en déduire les émotions qu'ils pourraient ressentir. Nous avons montré que les ovins évaluent un événement en fonction : 1) de sa prévisibilité ; 2) de son adéquation avec les attentes préalablement construites ; 3) de la possibilité qu'ils ont de le contrôler ; 4) du contexte social (dominance/subordination) dans lequel il se produit. Ainsi, les ovins pourraient ressentir des émotions négatives telles que la peur, la colère, ou l'ennui, et des émotions positives comme le plaisir