Judgment bias tasks (JBTs) are considered as a family of promising tools in the assessment
of emotional states of animals. JBTs provide a cognitive measure of optimism and/or …

Highlights•Optimism and pessimism can be defined operationally, and hence applied to non-
human animals.•Optimism is defined as a higher expectation of reward or a lower …

Background: Accumulating evidence suggests that cannabidiol (CBD) may be an effective
and safe anxiolytic agent and potentially also an antidepressant. Aim: The objective of this …

Human decision making is modified by emotional state. Rodents exhibit similar biases
during interpretation of ambiguous cues that can be altered by affective state manipulations …

The cognitive bias model of animal welfare assessment is informed by studies with humans
demonstrating that the interaction between emotion and cognition can be detected using …

Stereotypies are abnormal repetitive behaviour patterns that are highly prevalent in
laboratory mice and are thought to reflect impaired welfare. Thus, they are associated with …

Affect-induced cognitive judgement biases occur in both humans and animals. Animals in a
more negative affective state tend to interpret ambiguous cues more negatively than animals …

Depression is one of the most common but poorly understood psychiatric conditions.
Although drug treatments and psychological therapies are effective in some patients, many …

Cognitive processes are influenced by underlying affective states, and tests of cognitive bias
have recently been developed to assess the valence of affective states in animals. These …

Positive and negative moods can be treated as prior expectations over future delivery of
rewards and punishments. This provides an inferential foundation for the cognitive …