Influence of prenatal experience with human voice on the neonatal behavioural reaction to human voices with different emotion - INRAE - Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement
Poster De Conférence Année : 2014

Influence of prenatal experience with human voice on the neonatal behavioural reaction to human voices with different emotion

Résumé

Farm animals have to adapt to human presence from birth and being handled may lead to fear and stress reactions. It is known that the mother can be used as a postnatal model in the development of young-human relationship. hrough her, some information like auditory ones may even be learnt prenatally. We tested this idea in pigs because they communicate a lot by acoustic signals. he hypotheses were that prenatal experience with human voice could modify behavioural reactions to the experienced voice and to an unfamiliar voice expressing diferent emotions. We worked with 30 pregnant sows from the last month of gestation. Ten sows (treatment A) were submitted to recordings of human voices during handling: vA during positive interactions and vB during negative interactions, twice a day, 5 days a week, for 10 minutes. Ten other sows (treatment B) received the contrary, i.e. vB during positive interactions and vA during negative interactions. Ten last sows (treatment C) received no vocal stimulations during handling sessions. Two days old piglets (36 A, 39 B, 35 C) were submitted to a 5 min choice test between voices vA and vB in a testing pen (2×1 m). Each voice was played back through loudspeakers positioned at each end of the pen. At 15-18 days of age, 20 other piglets from each treatment were tested in the same conditions except that we played back the voice of an unknown person, reading the same text with a joyful or angry intention. In both tests we recorded vocalisations and locomotion. Data were analysed using non parametric statistics (Statview). In both tests, A and B piglets started to move sooner (P<0.01) and produced less stress related vocalisations than C piglets (P<0.05). All piglets spent more time close to the loudspeakers (<50 cm) than at a distance (P<0.001). he latency (median (IQ): 54 s (86 s), P>0.05) to be and the time spent (178 s (46 s)) close to the loudspeakers did not depend on the treatment (P>0.05). We also found no diference between the time spent close to one loudspeaker or the other, neither for vA versus vB, nor for joyful versus angry intention (P>0.05). he results show that the prenatal experience of human voice reduces postnatal behavioural reactions of stress (vocalisations, latency to move) during the playback human voices. However, it does not seem to induce speciic attraction toward human voice, or human emotional intention. herefore prenatal experience with human voice may be a good way of reducing fear reactions to human voice ater birth.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
14Tallet281_1.pdf (3.74 Mo) Télécharger le fichier
Origine Fichiers éditeurs autorisés sur une archive ouverte

Dates et versions

hal-02740724 , version 1 (02-06-2020)

Identifiants

Citer

Céline Tallet, Marine Rakotomahandry, Carole Guérin, Alban Lemasson, Martine Hausberger. Influence of prenatal experience with human voice on the neonatal behavioural reaction to human voices with different emotion. 48th Congress of the International Society for Applied Ethology, Jul 2014, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2014, Proceedings of 48th Congress of the International Society for Applied Ethology - Moving On. ⟨10.3920/978-90-8686-797-4⟩. ⟨hal-02740724⟩
252 Consultations
166 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

More