Dear Friends, dear Readers,
Do you want to win? Then you should consider following questions and the answers I found.
Have you ever wondered over the fact that almost all horses kept by us undergo training? Either the horse is trained to stand still while groomed, to give the hoof, to be led on a line or to be saddled or to be ridden? There is literally no horse that is not domesticated or maybe even better expressed, socialized, by us humans.
Have you thought what this fact has for a meaning and with which means we work and use to accomplish a change in the behavior of our horses?
To follow that line of thought further, have you ever wondered what the best approach is in training your horse? Have you wondered what the word “train” means? Or do you prefer to use the word “educate” or “develop”? What are the differences in these words and what can they contribute to find a better way to communicate and understand our horse and vice versa? And what does the meaning of these words can contribute to achieve our objectives we have when interacting with a horse?
To train means that you teach a person or an animal the knowledge or skills that are needed to do a particular task or job. Often we understand by training that we prepare us through exercises to attain a certain level of performance. These exercises can be mental (like doing mathematical equations) or physical (like running). Not to forget that we often understand by the word training that is an organized activity, both in how often the training is hold, daily, monthly, e.g. (frequency) as well in the progression, meaning that we first train more simply structured tasks, skills, etc. before we move on to more advanced and complex tasks or skills (Dictionary.com; Sinclair, 2008).
To develop means to grow over a period of time, often by using ones owns capabilities and potential. Our own capabilities and potential are meant to expand or to elaborate to a more advanced or effective level (Dictionary.com; Sinclair, 2008). For example our capability to listen to other people is growing through practicing different methods and we through this we become able to emphasize or understand other people better. This in turn can lead to more conflict-free interactions between us and other people.
To educate means that a person is taught to do something in a better way, usually by acquiring knowledge and skills. These knowledge and skills are acquired through a systematic process where the person learns through reasoning, reflection and action. Education is seen as progression and the more educated you become the higher the standard of learning you have reached (Dictionary.com; Sinclair, 2008). Education is often seen as the task of a country’s government, meaning a government shall create and proved structures like a school system.
Where are now the differences? Where do they contribute to find a better way to interact with our horse? Maybe it is not the much the what but the how?
How do we interact? Maybe we have to look not only at the process of how to train, to develop or educate, but on the process of information processing, and especially on how do our horses learn?
As I have a couple of times before mentioned, the process of learning for horses differs from us humans in the way that we humans have two major ways of processing information, whereas scientists claim, that horses have only one. The explicit way can be described as declarative and here we humans process semantic (facts) and episodic (events) information. In the implicit, the non-declarative, way, which we share with our horses, we process information in five different ways: priming, procedural, associative (classical & conditional), and non-associative (Smith and Kosslyn, 2007). The parts of the brain where explicit information processing takes place are the lateral cortex, the frontal lobe, and the medial temporal lobe, whereas the implicit information processing takes place in the reflex system, the cerebellum, the striatum, the limbic system and in the cortex. These parts we have in common with our horses (Smith and Kosslyn, 2007, Mc Greevy, 2004).
However all these different ways to process information, meaning the way how we learn, are influenced by one phenomenon: our feelings or emotions.
Emotions or feelings influence each step in information processing from how we experience something to our reaction upon this experience. Emotions influence though not as earlier thought by direct influencing behavior, but through influencing our behavior and actions through giving us a signal which functions as feedback, anticipation or reflection (Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall and Liqing Zhang, 2007).
Emotions are functioning as a signal, they make it possible that we understand our environment, that we can make sense of things and people, they signal us if we can be joyful anticipate a reward or if we have to be careful, and they give us the chance to improve behaviors through giving us a positive or negative feeling if we did right or wrong. And horses have just the same emotional experiences as we have. They know when to look forward when you come to give them breakfast; they know when to be careful when unknown horses or people advance them. Emotions give them the needed clues.
Emotions are categorized in two dimensions, negative and positive ones (If you want to know why that is so, please read: Solomon, R. C. and Stone, L. D. (2002), On “Positive” and “Negative” Emotions. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 32: 417–435. doi: 10.1111/1468-5914.00196)
Scientists found that negative emotions “impact an individual’s attention span” (Biswas-Diener and Patterson, 2011) which is helpful in risky and dangerous situations as it will “narrow the thought-action pattern” (Abe, 2011). You who know horses will have made the experience that most horses chose to run when they think there is a threat, avoiding instead of approaching the threat. However, there are also situations where the horse chooses to approach a situation, and that is an interesting aspect – as we regard this behavior as abnormal. But why does this horse differ from others?
Positive emotions have in the past two decades gained attention in scientific research and the focus is no longer on what momentary happiness or satisfaction do to a person, but what positive emotions contribute in the “domains of mental health, social relationships, and work” (Abe, 2011). Abe (2011) quotes research done by Cohn, Fredrickson, Brown, Mikels, and Conway (2009) which found that positive emotions “undo or buffer the deleterious effects of negative emotions and thereby contribute to psychological resilience and flourishing.” But positive emotions play also a role in learning, and especially in learning that is linked to experiences. Scientists found that positive emotions facilitate the learning process but also serve as “valuable psychological and social resources for coping with the various challenges” (Abe, 2011) a person undergoes in his development. Summarized would this mean that positive emotions facilitate learning “mainly by expanding a person’s thought-action repertoire” (Abe, 2011). Positive emotions influence motivation positively and the mood at the time of learning affects not only the encoding stage, but also the recall stage (Pekrun, 1992). So taken together, these studies on the impact on emotions on learning should us motivate to re-assess, re-think, and re-evaluate the learning process, the way how we train, develop and educate our horses.
One of the tools we should use in the process should be the use of positive emotions which will make our horses proud, enthusiastic, joyful, and content. This in turn will make our horses self-confident, they will be able to cope with challenging situations as they have the resources they need and they will thank you it with health, friendship and performance.
The questions we should ask us when we interact with our horses are:
- Which emotions/feelings experience our horses when we take care of them, when we train them, when we perform with them in a competition? And in general, when we teach them to obey our wishes?
- How can we see, feel and hear if our horse is satisfied, happy, interested, anxious, bored, jealous or sad?
- How do these emotions affect the horse, us and the interaction between us both? How do these emotions affect health, social relationships and performance? How do these emotions affect the training and the development of the horse?
- What are the origins of these emotions? Which are originated in the horse and which are originated in its environment?
- What can we do to foster positive emotions and to help horses avoid negative emotions, or to cope with negative emotions in flexible ways once they emerge?
(these questions originate from Perkun, Petz, Titz and Perry, 2002)
I think it is time that we make use of what scientific research shows in the past decades: positive emotions foster growth and development. And isn’t that the overall objective, no matter if we are riding through the forest or attending an international jumping or dressage contest?
We can only win. Let’s begin!
Wishing you and your horse happy and light days ahead,
with best regards,
Jenny Friedl.
References
Abe, J. A. A. (2011). Positive emotions, emotional intelligence, and successful experiental learning. Personality and Individual Differences, 51, 817-822.
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.
Cohn, M., Fredrickson, B. L., Brown, S. L., Mikels, J. A., & Conway, A. M. (2009). Happiness unpacked. Positive emotions increase life-satisfaction by building resilience. Emotion, 9, 361- 368.
McGreevy, P. (2004). Equine Behavior. A guide for veterinarians and equine scientists. London: Saunders.
Pekrun, R. (1992). The impact of emotions on learning and achievement. Towards a theory of cognitive/motivational mediators. Applied Psychology, 41, 359-376.
Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Titz, W., & Perry, R. P. (2002). Academic emotion in students self-regulated learning and achievement. A program of qualitative and quantitative research. Educational Psychologist, 37, 91-105.
Sinclair, J. (ed.) (2008). Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for Advanced Learners: Major New Edition. Hamburg: Harper Collins Edition.
Smith, E. E. & Kosslyn, St. M. (2007). Cognitive Psychology. Mind and Brain. New Jersey: Pearson Education.
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