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Visit http://www.soloequestrian.com/ to read about Solo Harness, the loading innovation
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Learning
Learning is defined as ‘changing behaviour as a result of experience’. The purpose of learning is survival in a changing environment.
Habituation: loss of sensitivity to unimportant stimuli
Habituation stops animals from wasting time or energy reacting to the stimulus e.g. when you first enter a room with a ticking clock you hear every tick, but after a while your brain filters it out so that is no longer heard. Habituation is probably the simplest form of learning.
Classical conditioning: many animals can learn to associate one stimulus with another.
Pavlov, a famous early physiologist, fed meat to dogs, causing them to salivate. Just before the feeding he exposed the dogs to a ringing bell. After a while, the dogs salivated readily in response to the sound alone, which they had learned to associate with the normal stimulus.
Operant conditioning: also called trial and error learning. The animal learns to associate one of its own behaviours with a reward or punishment; the animal then tends to repeat or avoid that behaviour.
Operant conditioning is the basis of most of the animal training done by humans, in which the trainer typically induces a particular behaviour first by rewarding the animal.
Training
Much of the early training of young horses involves habituation – getting the horse used to things, for instance cars.
More advanced training typically follows operant conditioning through negative reinforcement. A correct response to an unpleasant stimulus (relaxing the jaw and backing up in response to pressure from the bit) is rewarded by removal of the stimulus (loosening the reins).
A great deal can be accomplished in training simply by ignoring incorrect responses. A response to a stimulus that is neither rewarded nor punished tends to disappear of its own accord – this is known as extinction.
It is easier to teach a horse to respond to a command when the desired behaviour comes naturally and instinctively – animals may show a ‘biological preparedness’ for learning certain things. At the famous Spanish Riding School of Vienna, stallions are trained to execute airs above the ground. The particular air for which a stallion is trained is the result of observing the young horses at play to see which movements come most naturally to each.
Reinforcement
Appetitive reinforcers increase the likelihood of a behaviour being performed - they are forms of reward. Appetitive reinforcers may act through either positive or negative reinforcement.
Aversive reinforcers, or punishments, have the opposite effect reducing the likelihood of a behaviour being performed.
Note that negative reinforcement is NOT the same as punishment – negative reinforcement comes BEFORE the desired behaviour, punishment comes AFTER it.
Rewards MUST be provided within about half a second of the horse performing the requested behaviour, in order for it to associate the reward with the behaviour.
Consistency of reward is also very important.
Effects of punishment
When punishment is used in training systems, animals may become neurotic.
In other words, they learn faster but are more worried about getting the right answer.
Punishment perceived as reward
Rewards and punishments are defined by their effect not by their intended action. Not uncommonly a handler may end up rewarding a behaviour that they are intending to punish e.g. a horse that kicks the door of it’s stable is often ‘punished’ by being shouted at or having a hand flicked at it. To the horse, however, these bits of attention are more likely to be seen as a reward – if the horse is bored, any attention is better than none.
Lack of focus
Punishment does not help to tell the horse what it should be doing. There are many more ways to get something wrong than to get it right, so one undesired behaviour may be exchanged for another if the appropriate behaviour is not specifically encouraged by reward. There is also the risk of discouraging a behaviour that in later training will be required.
Depending on the method employed, punishment is also potentially an abuse of the animal.
Possible undesirable outcomes of punishment are:
- aversion: the horse becomes fearful of whatever it associates the punishment with – the trainer, the place in which it is trained or some other aspect of the situation.
- habituation: the horse learns to ignore the punishment
- aggression/ learned helplessness: the horse becomes aggressive towards the trainer, or, more damagingly, it ‘gives up’, learning that whatever it does results in punishment so it may as well not try to improve the situation.
- increased timidity: the horse becomes less willing to try anything out of the normal routine.
General guidelines to training new behaviours
Seek opportunities for reward, as these direct the animal’s behaviour towards a precise training goal
Don’t overuse a reward - the horse may become habituated to it and stop responding to it.
Choose an appropriate schedule for the training programme.
Be selective about which behaviours are to be rewarded. This helps you to apply rewards appropriately.
The choice of reward should be as relevant as possible in order to take advantage of the biological biases within the horse. A break from work is often a very good reward.
Be careful of timing of actions - rewards must be given as quickly as possible after the desired behaviour has been performed otherwise the reward may be associates with something totally unrelated to the behaviour.
If an animal is punished when is stops misbehaving, it is being punished for stopping the behaviour NOT for performing the unwanted behaviour, and next time is likely to carry on with the behaviour for longer.
Secondary rewards, including verbal praise and retort, must be classically conditioned to an appetitive or aversive reinforcer before they have any effect on the behaviour. This means that they must be first associated with something the horse likes or doesn’t like, for instance a food snack or a loud noise, before they can have a good effect on their own. This type of classical conditioning is the basis for clicker training – the clicker provides a very recognisable and consistent sound that can be associated with a pleasurable experience.
The vast majority of training can be carried out by rewarding the good and ignoring the bad – done in this way, training is enjoyable for both the horse and the human.
Learning is defined as ‘changing behaviour as a result of experience’. The purpose of learning is survival in a changing environment.
Habituation: loss of sensitivity to unimportant stimuli
Habituation stops animals from wasting time or energy reacting to the stimulus e.g. when you first enter a room with a ticking clock you hear every tick, but after a while your brain filters it out so that is no longer heard. Habituation is probably the simplest form of learning.
Classical conditioning: many animals can learn to associate one stimulus with another.
Pavlov, a famous early physiologist, fed meat to dogs, causing them to salivate. Just before the feeding he exposed the dogs to a ringing bell. After a while, the dogs salivated readily in response to the sound alone, which they had learned to associate with the normal stimulus.
Operant conditioning: also called trial and error learning. The animal learns to associate one of its own behaviours with a reward or punishment; the animal then tends to repeat or avoid that behaviour.
Operant conditioning is the basis of most of the animal training done by humans, in which the trainer typically induces a particular behaviour first by rewarding the animal.
Training
Much of the early training of young horses involves habituation – getting the horse used to things, for instance cars.
More advanced training typically follows operant conditioning through negative reinforcement. A correct response to an unpleasant stimulus (relaxing the jaw and backing up in response to pressure from the bit) is rewarded by removal of the stimulus (loosening the reins).
A great deal can be accomplished in training simply by ignoring incorrect responses. A response to a stimulus that is neither rewarded nor punished tends to disappear of its own accord – this is known as extinction.
It is easier to teach a horse to respond to a command when the desired behaviour comes naturally and instinctively – animals may show a ‘biological preparedness’ for learning certain things. At the famous Spanish Riding School of Vienna, stallions are trained to execute airs above the ground. The particular air for which a stallion is trained is the result of observing the young horses at play to see which movements come most naturally to each.
Reinforcement
Appetitive reinforcers increase the likelihood of a behaviour being performed - they are forms of reward. Appetitive reinforcers may act through either positive or negative reinforcement.
Aversive reinforcers, or punishments, have the opposite effect reducing the likelihood of a behaviour being performed.
Note that negative reinforcement is NOT the same as punishment – negative reinforcement comes BEFORE the desired behaviour, punishment comes AFTER it.
Rewards MUST be provided within about half a second of the horse performing the requested behaviour, in order for it to associate the reward with the behaviour.
Consistency of reward is also very important.
Effects of punishment
When punishment is used in training systems, animals may become neurotic.
In other words, they learn faster but are more worried about getting the right answer.
Punishment perceived as reward
Rewards and punishments are defined by their effect not by their intended action. Not uncommonly a handler may end up rewarding a behaviour that they are intending to punish e.g. a horse that kicks the door of it’s stable is often ‘punished’ by being shouted at or having a hand flicked at it. To the horse, however, these bits of attention are more likely to be seen as a reward – if the horse is bored, any attention is better than none.
Lack of focus
Punishment does not help to tell the horse what it should be doing. There are many more ways to get something wrong than to get it right, so one undesired behaviour may be exchanged for another if the appropriate behaviour is not specifically encouraged by reward. There is also the risk of discouraging a behaviour that in later training will be required.
Depending on the method employed, punishment is also potentially an abuse of the animal.
Possible undesirable outcomes of punishment are:
- aversion: the horse becomes fearful of whatever it associates the punishment with – the trainer, the place in which it is trained or some other aspect of the situation.
- habituation: the horse learns to ignore the punishment
- aggression/ learned helplessness: the horse becomes aggressive towards the trainer, or, more damagingly, it ‘gives up’, learning that whatever it does results in punishment so it may as well not try to improve the situation.
- increased timidity: the horse becomes less willing to try anything out of the normal routine.
General guidelines to training new behaviours
Seek opportunities for reward, as these direct the animal’s behaviour towards a precise training goal
Don’t overuse a reward - the horse may become habituated to it and stop responding to it.
Choose an appropriate schedule for the training programme.
Be selective about which behaviours are to be rewarded. This helps you to apply rewards appropriately.
The choice of reward should be as relevant as possible in order to take advantage of the biological biases within the horse. A break from work is often a very good reward.
Be careful of timing of actions - rewards must be given as quickly as possible after the desired behaviour has been performed otherwise the reward may be associates with something totally unrelated to the behaviour.
If an animal is punished when is stops misbehaving, it is being punished for stopping the behaviour NOT for performing the unwanted behaviour, and next time is likely to carry on with the behaviour for longer.
Secondary rewards, including verbal praise and retort, must be classically conditioned to an appetitive or aversive reinforcer before they have any effect on the behaviour. This means that they must be first associated with something the horse likes or doesn’t like, for instance a food snack or a loud noise, before they can have a good effect on their own. This type of classical conditioning is the basis for clicker training – the clicker provides a very recognisable and consistent sound that can be associated with a pleasurable experience.
The vast majority of training can be carried out by rewarding the good and ignoring the bad – done in this way, training is enjoyable for both the horse and the human.
Visit www.soloequestrian.com to read about Solo Harness, the loading innovation
1 comment:
seeing kelly marks train horses is awesome, check out video's of her here http://www.horsehero.com/1179/pro-interviews/5806
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