Dear Friends, dear Readers,
you certainly know by now that I am interested in learning. I have seen my horse Sir Simple under so many different situations through the past years. I have seen him improve skills like coping with adverse situations or improving his ability to influence me, but I have until now not understood how he really does. Well, I have understood so far that he his an excellent observer, that he never gives up and that he uses each possibility he get to improve himself. That are the visible signs I can see – but what I try to sort out, is the invisible process which is going on in his mind. The way the information takes, from his senses to his brain and how it is processed and how it is stored and then used again in a suitable situation.
You remember certainly that I quoted a learning theory, or better a theory we also use to try to ‘educate‘ our horses in some of my posts: Learning is synonymous with behavior change (McGreevy, 2004). This theory is a leftover of behaviorism, a perspective in psychology which influenced our view of the mind and behavior sustainable and quite effectively. It says that environmental factors govern our actions, which means that we are more or less a product of the environment, meaning we are reactors to the environment. Behaviorism contributed with basic laws of learning which says that we can by manipulating environmental factors, change behavior towards the behavior we aspire (Passer, Smith, Holt, Bremner, Sutherland & Vliek, 2009).
This theory of learning influenced also the way of training horses and of course the way we look at horses – as a reactor to the environment. In a way this ‘understanding of horses’ serves also our purpose to use horses in competition – they are ‘only’, if I may say so very critically, a reactor to the environment – they have no own will as all they are, is a product ‘produced’/'manufactured’ of/by the environment – or if I may say so critically again, us – we – the human beings. That is very suitable and useful perspective if I think in the terms of I am the teacher and you are the student. The teacher is supposed to have knowledge, whereas the student is supposed to have no knowledge – also a unbalance in knowledge. In term of horse training it can be said (very simplified of course) that the human being is the one who knows and the horse the one who does not.
I wonder if this kind of theory has led us kind of astray or does it make easier for us to use horses in sports and competitive events? Because as far as I know, most people wouldn’t call training horses education. And certainly a lot of people really don’t ‘educate’ their horses in the way which we try to educate our children – to become a person of their own, a person with self-confidence and self-insight, the capability to develop and maintain good social relationships, a person who takes responsibility of his/her own actions, who supports others and yet has a free will. Surely most of the horse owners don’t think in such terms, the terms of humanism I want to say.
So the behavioral theory of learning might be more useful in training horses as we are more interested in wining a competition and therefore we only pay attention to the physiological part of developing a horse’s body to expand his capacity of strength, endurance, and coordination. Of course we also spend some time habituating the horse to new environments (like show arenas, etc.), but we do this just for the purpose of the bigger purpose – wining a competition.
You might wonder now what has all this do to with the head of this post – learning and a new way to look at it. In my work with undergraduate students I am all the time interested how can I contribute that the student’s experience learning in another way. Experience that learning is a process of their own doing, not a ‘behavior change due to environmental factors’, but is a change in the meaning of experience. For that purpose I am constantly searching for evidence or a theory which matches my assumptions and observations and that I am getting behind the obvious and visible behaviors to the processes forming the basis for how humans and animals learn.
And lastly I did find a theory, thanks to my enthusiastic and invigorating students! And this theory is based on evidence, so it’s not just a chimera, a fantasy of our imagination or wishful-thinking:-) Novak and Gowin (1984:x) claim that “learning is a change in the meaning of experience” and emphasize also “the significance of feelings” in the process of learning. “Human experience involves not only thinking and acting but also feeling, and it is only when all three are considered together that individuals can be empowered to enrich the meaning of their experience” (1984:x). And here finally, I think I have found another puzzle bit in my search for understanding equine learning better.
To most of you it is known that horses do not own a very developed pre-frontal cortex where reflective and logic thinking is situated, meaning that horses can’t think in a reflective and logic way. Therefor using for example Kolb’s experiential learning model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_A._Kolb) can’t be used for horses – as it uses the explicit way of information processing – analytic and rational. So Novak’s and Gowin’s (…) theory that feelings play a major role in how we learn, opens a new door. This open door is also supported by an article published by Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, and Zhang (2007). They meta-analysed around 300 articles about emotions, cognition and affect and concluded that emotions are necessary for learning, as emotions serve as a feedback system. But unlike the Direct Causation Theory of emotions, Baumeister et al. (2007) claims that behavior pursues emotion and explains it as follows (2007:173):
“Emotion provides feedback about recent actions and, by implication, about the adequacy of the current if-then rules on which those actions were based. Positive emotions generally validate the existing rules because those emotions signify that what the person did turned out well, and so the existing rules were presumably effective. Negative emotions signal that one’s behavior was not successful, and hence they suggest that the if-then rules need to be revised. The emotional state may stimulate counterfactual thinking and other ruminations about how one could have gotten better results had one followed a different if-then rule”.
Baumeister et al. (2007: 174) concludes that “emotion serves as a stimulus for cognitive processing“. Here, dear readers, attention is required. Lots of people say or claim that horses have not a well-developed pre-frontal cortex, therefore cognitive processes like thinking can’t be very well-developed. Well, you are partly right. But cognition is not only thinking, it is also attention, retrieving memories and schemas from long-term memory, and generating responses – also all processes where information is processed to make sense of us and our environment. So, I think it is important to understand that a horse’ emotions stimulate processes like attention, remembering, and responding.
That means, to come back to the theory of learning and education, emotion gives the horse meaning to a situation and much more important, it will influence over how the horse will master its learning. Novak and Gowin express that with following words (…: xi) which I quote as I think I could not find a better way to describe it:
“All [of you] have surely experienced sometime during their schooling the debilitating effect of an experience that threatened their self-image, their sense of ‘I am OK’. We have found repeatedly in our research studies that educational practices that do not lead learners to grasp the meaning of the learning task fail to give them confidence in their abilities and do nothing to enhance their sense of mastery of events”.
Dear Reader, if you know ask yourself the question, if you agree with me, that horses can have feelings, meaning they can feel pain and joy, how many times have you observed when people handle/train horses that they have given or confirmed the horse confidence? Or could you observe that people handling/training horses try to give the horse a meaning in what it is doing? Maybe you’ll ask now how can I give a horse meaning in its doings? After all, a horse hasn’t the sense to understand meaning? Well, I think asked in that way, you are probably right. But if we go back to feelings. I think and claim, that a horse has found a meaning in doing something, when it shows confidence in its task and trust toward its person. When the horse is relaxed and at it ease. Then for me, the horse understands the task and has a sense of meaning. However, if you don’t agree, please go out into the field and observe and come back with a constructive comment.
So, my conclusion about learning theory, or the what I prefer to use ‘educational’ theory, is that we need to administer a new thinking in our way to handle horses, a way that is more complex and is more reflecting the word education than the word training. And here, Nowak and Gowin once again have the word (1984:xii):
“[Training] programs can lead to desired behaviors such as answering math problems or spelling correctly, educational programs should [however (my addition)] provide learners with the basis for understanding why and how new knowledge is related to what they already know and give them the affective assurance that they have the capability to use this new knowledge in new contexts.”
I think it is time that we re-evaluate the learning theory for horses, moving from the behaviorism theory of the horse as a product of environmental factors to the more complex, challenging and demanding theory that the horse is a creature which is able to use emotions as a feedback system to develop and improve cognitive processes – which in turn also demands that we change the way in how we train our horses. I would like that we begin to use the term ‘education’ and in this meaning also evaluate how we best can support the horse in its development and progress towards an educated horse.
References
Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., DeWall, C. N., & Zhang, L. (2007). How emotion shapes behavior: Feedback, anticipation, and reflection, rather than direct causation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(2), 167-203.
McGreevy, P. (2004). Equine Behavior. A Guide for Veterinarians and Equine Scientists. London: Saunders.
Novak, J. D., Gowin, D. B., & Butler Kahle, J. (1984). Learning How To Learn. Cambridge, USA: Cambridge University Press.
Passer, M., Smith, R., Holt, N., Bremner, A., Sutherland, E., & Vliek, M. (2009). Psychology. The Science of Mind and Behavior. London: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.