Studies investigating the role of dual language use in modulating executive functions have reported mixed results, with some studies reporting benefits in older adults. These studies typically focus on bilingual settings, while the role of dual language use in diglossic settings is rarely investigated. In diglossia, the two language varieties are separated by context, making it an ideal test case for the effects on cognition of Single Language Contexts, as defined by the Adaptive Control Hypothesis (Green & Abutalebi, 2013). We compare the performances of three groups of older adults, Arab diglossics (n = 28), bilinguals (n = 29), and monolinguals (n = 41), on the Flanker and Stroop tasks, measuring inhibition abilities, and the Color-shape task, measuring switching abilities. We report a diglossic benefit in inhibition as measured by the Flanker task only, and no benefits for the bilingual group. These findings are discussed with reference to conversational contexts in dual language use.

Maternal fish consumption exposes the fetus to beneficial nutrients and potentially adverse neurotoxicants. The current study investigated associations between maternal fish consumption and child neurodevelopmental outcomes. Maternal fish consumption was assessed in the Seychelles Child Development Study Nutrition Cohort 1 (n 229) using 4-day food diaries. Neurodevelopment was evaluated at 9 and 30 months, and 5 and 9 years with test batteries assessing twenty-six endpoints and covering multiple neurodevelopmental domains. Analyses used multiple linear regression with adjustment for covariates known to influence child neurodevelopment. This cohort consumed an average of 8 fish meals/week and the total fish intake during pregnancy was 106·8 (sd 61·9) g/d. Among the twenty-six endpoints evaluated in the primary analysis there was one beneficial association. Children whose mothers consumed larger quantities of fish performed marginally better on the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (a test of nonverbal intelligence) at age 5 years (β 0·003, 95 % CI (0, 0·005)). A secondary analysis dividing fish consumption into tertiles found no significant associations when comparing the highest and lowest consumption groups. In this cohort, where fish consumption is substantially higher than current global recommendations, maternal fish consumption during pregnancy was not beneficially or adversely associated with children’s neurodevelopmental outcomes.

While breast-feeding is the recommended feeding mode in infancy, rates are low in some Western societies, and infants are widely fed formula. France, in particular, shows high rates of infant formula use, including formulas with protein hydrolysates. The degree of protein hydrolysis has previously been associated with neurodevelopmental outcomes. The present study examines the associations between the protein’s hydrolysis degree in infant formula and child neurodevelopment up to 3·5 years of age in the French nationwide Étude Longitudinale Française depuis l’Enfance (ELFE study). Parents reported on brand and name of the formula used at 2 months, and protein hydrolysis degree was derived from the ingredient list. Analyses were based on 6979 infants (92·2, 6·8 and 1 % consuming non-hydrolysed, partially and extensively hydrolysed formulas, respectively). Neurodevelopment was assessed at age 1 and 3·5 years with the Child Development Inventory (CDI), at age 2 years with the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories and at age 3·5 years with the Picture Similarities sub-scale (British Ability Scales). Associations between protein hydrolysis degree and child neurodevelopment were assessed using linear and logistic regression for overall scores and poor CDI sub-domain scores (<25th centile), respectively. Among formula-fed infants, protein hydrolysis degree in infant formula was not associated with overall neurodevelopmental scores up to 3·5 years. Some associations were found with the motor skills CDI sub-domain, but they were not consistent at 1 and 3·5 years as well as across sensitivity analyses. The use of hydrolysed formula appears safe in terms of overall neurodevelopment, and research should further investigate specific neurodevelopmental domains.

In Rethinking Multilingual Experience through a Systems Framework of Bilingualism (Titone & Tiv, 2022), we encouraged psycholinguists and cognitive neuroscientists to consider integrating social and ecological aspects of multilingualism into a collective understanding of its cognitive and neurocognitive bases (i.e., to rethink experience). We then offered a framework – the Systems Framework of Bilingualism – and described empirical challenges and potential solutions with applying this framework to new research. Since the paper's publication, several eminent colleagues read and commented on our Keynote, noting both its strengths and areas for improvement. We read each commentary with enthusiasm and gratitude. Here, we briefly respond to several salient points raised, which led us to clarify and improve our theoretical approach. We first address what the commentaries agreed were strengths of the framework. We follow this with a discussion of what the commentaries stated could be improved or extended. We conclude with ways that we modified our model to collectively address concerns raised in the commentaries.

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.

The dual problem of explaining brain evolution and the way in which it has led to wide species differences in behaviour and physiology has often appeared intractable to scientists. The main limiting factor is that we do not understand enough about how brains work to appreciate why gross or fine morphological differences can lead to the considerable across- as well as within-species differences in behaviour. Even at a molecular level, while two-thirds of our genes are involved in regulating brain function, there is a high degree of homology within different phyla. In the context of quality of life (QoL), arguably the most important consideration is that the brain you have evolved is adapted to the environment you are living in and is capable of generating ‘conscious’ experience. When that environment is radically altered, issues arise regarding whether there is sufficient adaptability to cope and the extent to which mental as well as physical suffering might be experienced as a consequence. At the other end of the spectrum there is the question of how enriched social and physical environments might enhance QoL through promoting positive affect. Here I will discuss potential functional contributions of differences in brain size and organisation and the impact of experience. I will mainly focus on mental functioning and show particularly that capacities for consciousness, emotional experience, social interaction and cognition and behavioural flexibility are likely to be widespread in other animal species, even if less developed than in humans.

Human factors (attitudes, personality traits, self-esteem, job satisfaction) strongly determine our behaviour towards animals, animal production and animal welfare. Recent studies have emphasised positive human contacts as indicators of a stockperson's positive attitude towards animals and towards animal welfare in general. Stockmanship can be improved by careful selection of people and/or by training. However, little is known of the biological basis of the effect of stock handling procedures on the welfare of animals. The animal's perception of the stockperson (based both on emotional responses and cognitive aspects such as anticipation, recognition and categorisation), and the existence of sensitive periods in an animal's life, need to be explored in more depth, especially under farm conditions. We need to consider the complexity of human behaviour (eg husbandry practices, balance between positive and negative interactions, predictability, controllability) and its effect on animal welfare from the animal's point of view throughout its whole life. This paper identifies the importance of positive human contacts for both animals and stockpeople, and highlights the challenge to maintain such positive contacts despite the trend in modern agriculture to increase the number of animals per stockperson. This requires better knowledge of animal genetics, socialisation to humans during sensitive periods, and management of the social group. We emphasise the ethical importance of the human-animal relationship in the context of farm animal welfare and productivity.

The concept of quality of life in animals is closely associated with the concepts of animal sentience and animal welfare. It reflects a positive approach that inquires what animals like or prefer doing. The assessment of farm animal welfare requires a good understanding of the animals' affective experience, including their emotions. However, affective experience in animals is difficult to measure because of the absence of verbal communication. Recent studies in the field of cognitive psychology have shown that affective experience can be investigated without using verbal communication by examination of the interactions between emotions and cognition. On the one hand, appraisal theories provide a conceptual framework which suggests that emotions in humans are triggered by a cognitive process whereby the situation is evaluated on a limited number of elementary criteria such as familiarity and predictability. We have applied these appraisal theories to develop an experimental approach for studying the elementary criteria used by farm animals to evaluate their environment and the combinations of those criteria that trigger emotions. On the other hand, an increasing body of research, first in humans and then in other animals, suggests that emotions also influence cognitive processes by modifying attention, memory and judgement in a short- or long-term manner. Cognitive processes could therefore be manipulated and measured to provide new insights into how not only emotions but also more persistent affective states can be assessed in animals. Further work based on these cognitive approaches will offer new paradigms for improving our understanding of animal welfare, thus contributing to ‘a life of high quality’ in animals.

The level of priority and resource given to the care of organisms is influenced by beliefs and understanding about their capacities for conscious awareness. Variation in attitudes to animal welfare around the world today is partly a reflection of this. Improved understanding of the range of phenomena of which animals may be conscious is likely to lead to greater global consensus about the importance of high standards of animal welfare. This is a matter of current relevance. In the global free market there is a danger that efforts in one country to raise standards for farm or laboratory animals will be compromised by competition from others which employ cheaper, less welfare-friendly systems. Scientific developments which inform us about animals’ capacities for pleasant and unpleasant feelings will play an important role in the development of global agreement about animal welfare standards. Deciding which animals might have the capacity for consciousness, and thus for suffering, and of what they might be conscious, are fundamental issues which set boundaries to the ranges of species to be given basic or special forms of welfare protection. In practice, such lines have to be drawn and it is crucial that they are drawn in the right place. This is a difficult but essential task and society looks to scientists for guidance on the matter. There have been many developments in recent years in scientific approaches to the study of consciousness in animals which are pertinent to this debate.

Thinking about animal consciousness is beset with many pitfalls, a few of which are: i) lack of clarity in words used, especially confusing ‘cognition’ with ‘consciousness’ and using words such as ‘emotion’ in both an objective sense (behaviour and physiology) and to imply consciousness; ii) failing to acknowledge sufficiently that different people use different versions of the argument from analogy with ourselves to infer consciousness in non-humans in animals; iii) assuming that choice and preference imply consciousness; iv) assuming that autonomic responses imply consciousness (a particular danger to those who look for physiological ‘measures’ of animal welfare); v) assuming that complexity of behaviour implies complexity of cognition and in turn consciousness; and vi) assuming that only cognitively complex organisms are conscious. Consciousness raises many questions of direct relevance to animal welfare that as yet have no answers, but finding possible answers may be made slightly easier if we avoid these obvious pitfalls.

This paper reviews the debate that is currently taking place in the field of philosophy of mind on different conceptual models of consciousness. More and more philosophers argue that the explanation of subjective phenomena requires two complementary perspectives of understanding, known as the first- and third-person perspectives. The third-person perspective (ie conventional objectivity) accounts for the physical, functional aspects of consciousness, while the first-person perspective addresses the subjective, experiential aspects of consciousness. It is suggested that each of these conceptual perspectives may facilitate a different type of research in the study of animal emotion. Within the conventional, third-person perspective, a growing enthusiasm for issues of animal consciousness has led to sophisticated physical and cognitive models of animal emotion. The potential of the firstperson perspective, however, to provide a basis for models of animal subjective experience has remained largely unexplored. The paper concludes with a brief review of the author's recent experimental work on concepts of animal behavioural expression. The high reliability and repeatability of such concepts indicates that the first-person perspective may provide a valid research perspective in its own right.