UNDERSTANDING EQUINE BEHAVIOR

Instructor: Dr. Jennifer Williams

Lesson One

Psychological Terms Part 1

It may seem peculiar to begin a class on horse behavior by talking about psychology since people often think of psychologists as doctors who counsel or treat those with emotional issues. In fact, when I was working on my undergraduate degree in psychology and equine science, someone asked me if I planned on becoming a horse therapist. That called to mind an image of a Shetland pony lying on his back on a sofa while I asked him to tell me all his problems.

While that’s a cute mental image, obviously none of you plan on becoming horsey therapists with an extra-large horse sofa. But I’m starting this class with two lessons on psychology and psychological terms because psychology isn’t just about treating problems. Psychologists also study learning theories: how people and animals learn. So having a better understanding of psychology is going to help you understand how the horses you interact with, learn.

When you understand how horses learn, you become a better trainer. You can train more quickly and help the horses you train retain knowledge. You will also avoid accidentally teaching horses lessons you wish they hadn’t learned (such as how to pin their ears to get you leave them alone).

These first two lessons on psychological terms will be a brief overview of learning theories. If you find this interesting, like I do, check out an advanced book on psychological learning theories.

As horse professionals, the learning theory that we’re most interested in is “behaviorism”. At its very basic level, J.B. Watson (the father of behaviorism) said that behaviorism was the study of stimuli and responses. In other words, something happens (a stimulus) and the animal does something (a response).

Example: You crack a whip (stimulus) and the horse begins cantering (response). You pull on a rein (stimulus), the horse turns (response). You open the feed room door (stimulus) your horse whinnies (response). If you think about most things that horses do, you can identify the stimulus and response.

Behaviorists study only what they can observe when watching an animal (or a person) and focus on how new behaviors are acquired through conditioning. Behaviorists don’t study the thought processes, emotions, or feelings that happen internally.

Because animals can’t tell us what they are thinking and feeling, we must observe their behavior to guess what’s going on internally. This makes behaviorism especially relevant when studying horses and other animals. While we can’t ask a horse what he’s thinking or feeling, we can watch him carefully to see what he does.

Psychologists have developed several behaviorism theories, but I find Operant Conditioning and Classical Conditioning to be the most important in horse training and behavior.

Operant Conditioning is a behaviorism learning theory originally put forth by B.F. Skinner. In Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning, changes in behavior happen because of an individual’s response to events that occur around him or to his environment. He described an operant behavior to be any behavior that operates on the environment and generates consequences.

For me, an easy way to remember how operant conditioning works is that operant conditioning occurs when an animal operates on the environment.

Example: Your horse touches the electric fence (operant behavior) and gets shocked. He’s less likely to touch that fence again than he was before getting shocked.

Skinner used rats to formulate his basic theories of operant conditioning. He placed rats in a box that contained one or two levers (these boxes are often called ‘Skinner boxes”). When the rat pressed the correct lever, he got a piece of food as a reward. In the beginning, the rat didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He wandered around the box, exploring his new place. By accident, he pressed the lever while climbing around, and he got a piece of food. Since he liked food, he wanted more. Trying to remember what he did to get the food, the rat crawled around, accidentally pressed the lever again, and got more food. Before long, the rat figured out that if he pressed the lever, he got food. He kept pressing the lever.

This basic example of operant conditioning explains how the consequences of what at first appears to be a random yet voluntary behavior determines whether or not the animal repeats that behavior. Pushing the lever initially was a random behavior, but because the rat got food when he pressed the lever, he kept pressing it.

You might think, “Well, Dr. Williams, we’re not putting horses in boxes and letting them press levers for food so why should we care about operant conditioning?” Although we don’t put horses in Skinner boxes, they still learn from operant conditioning. And if you understand how operant conditioning works, you can use this principle when training your horses.

Example: A horse wanders around his stall and bumps against the door (operant behavior). Someone accidentally left the door unlatched, so it swings open. The horse walks through the open door and eats the hay sitting in the barn aisle (consequence). In the future, he’s going to bump up against that door and test it to see if he can get out again.

Hopefully you can now see how horses learn through operant conditioning, but it may be a bit harder to understand how we train them using operant conditioning. That’s where a refinement to Skinner’s operant conditioning theory comes into play: the use of a discriminative stimulus. A discriminative stimulus doesn’t cause a behavior, but it can influence it because when the discriminative stimulus is present the desired behavior is reinforced and alternate behaviors aren’t reinforced. This increases the likelihood of the behavior in the presence of the discriminative stimulus.

Example: Whenever your horse walks up to you in the pasture, you give him a piece of carrot. That’s basic operant conditioning: your horse does something (walks up to you) and something happens (he gets a carrot). If he likes carrots, he’s more likely to walk up to you when he sees you in the pasture. Now if you rattle the chain on the pasture gate and your horse walks up to you and gets a carrot, you’ve reinforced the desired behavior (of walking up to you). If, however, you rattle the chain and he doesn’t walk up to you, there’s no carrot. The chain rattle is the discriminative stimulus: when your horse hears the chain rattle and comes up to you, he gets a carrot.

Most cues in horse training are discriminative stimuli: if the horse does what you ask him to do when you give him a cue, the behavior is reinforced. If he does something else, his behavior isn’t reinforced (or rewarded). Over several repetitions, he becomes more and more likely to respond to your cue. The cue doesn’t make him perform the behavior, but it can increase the likelihood that he’ll perform the behavior. It also signals to him when that behavior is appropriate.

Example: You cluck to your horse (discriminative stimulus), he starts to trot (behavior), and you pet his neck (reinforce). But if he starts to trot when you don’t cluck, you don’t pet his neck.

When thinking about operant conditioning, keep in mind that it deals with voluntary behaviors. Through training, we can modify those voluntary behaviors until they occur when and how we ask.

Reinforcers

Operant conditioning occurs through the use of rewards (called reinforcement) and punishment. Reinforcement strengthens a desired response while punishment eliminates an undesirable response.

Example: If you pet your horse (reinforcement) each time he stops when you say whoa, he’ll be more likely to stop when you say the word whoa.

Example: If you jerk on the horse’s lead rope (punishment) each time he tries to bolt past you, eventually he stops bolting past you.

Primary reinforcers are things that are biologically significant: in other words, they’re things needed for survival. This includes food, water, sleep/rest, and air. A primary reinforcer or punishment can also be pain, fear, or discomfort. A horse doesn’t have to be taught to respond to a primary reinforcer, the response is more instinctive.

Example: A horse doesn’t have to be taught that food is good: he needs food to survive. If your horse does something you want, such as walk up to you in the pasture, and you give him food, he’s going to be more likely to walk up to you. That food is a primary reinforcer.

Horses are individuals and respond to primary reinforcers differently: some horses aren’t as motivated by a chance to rest as others and some don’t like certain types of food. As a trainer, you’ll have to figure out the most effective primary reinforcers for each horse in your care and use them.

Example: I have a horse who is a picky eater: he doesn’t like carrots, apples, or treats so none of those are likely to influence his behavior. Because he likes grain, a handful of grain is a good primary reinforcer for him. He really likes not having to work, so allowing him to rest is the best primary reinforcer I can use.

Secondary reinforcers, or conditioned reinforcers, acquire their power as a reinforcer through an association with another stimulus that serves as a reinforcer. By itself, a secondary reinforcer doesn’t influence a horse’s behavior. But if you pair it with a primarily reinforcer, like food, the secondary reinforcer can influence behavior.

Example: Telling a horse ‘good boy’ each time he stops when you say whoa won’t increase the rate of a behavior by itself because the horse doesn’t know that hearing ‘good boy’ is desirable. However if you say ‘good boy’ each time your horse stops after you say whoa and follow it up with a bit of food, ‘good boy’ becomes a reinforcer on its own. Then you can use ‘good boy’ to reinforce other behavior: you ask the horse to trot off next to you when you cluck at him and say ‘good boy’ when he does so. ‘Good boy’ will reinforce his behavior of trotting off when you cluck.

After something is established as a secondary reinforcer, it needs to be occasionally paired with a primary reinforcer to retain its ability to reinforce behavior.

Example: Once the praise ‘good boy’ becomes an effective reinforcer, you’ll occasionally need to pair it with food to help it retain its ability to reinforcer your horse’s behavior.

Example: Another example of a conditioned primary reinforcer is the “growl” or other loud noise many horse trainers make when a horse does something wrong or bad. I have a horse who paws in the cross ties on occasion. In the beginning, I would “growl” at her (secondary reinforcer) and jerk on her lead rope (primary reinforcer/punishment). After several repetitions, she learned that the growl is followed by a jerk of the lead rope. Now if she starts to paw, I can growl and she stops. She also pins her ears and kicks, and if I growl when I see her pin her ears, she will turn back around and not kick at me. The growl has become a secondary reinforcer (punishment) that makes her stop bad behaviors.

Operant conditioning uses four types of reinforcers. These reinforcers can either be primary reinforcers or secondary reinforcers:

· Positive reinforcement: This is the one you are probably most familiar with: it is when you give your horse something good when he does what you ask.

Example: You say “whoa” and your horse stops. When he stops, you pet him. Over time, your horse will be more likely to stop when he hears the word “whoa” because he’s been positively reinforced.

· Negative reinforcement: This term is confusing for most people, but it means that something unpleasant is taken away when the horse does what is asked.

Example: You press your spurs into your horse’s sides to get him to move forward. As soon as he moves forward, you remove the spurs. Over time, it takes a lighter touch of your spurs before your horse moves forward.

· Positive punishment: We often use positive punishment to teach horses what we don’t want them to do: positive punishment is doing something the horse doesn’t like when he performs a behavior you don’t want. Positive punishment decreases the likelihood that the horse will repeat a behavior.

Example: When your horse paws in the cross ties, you smack him on the shoulder or yell “stop it”! Smacking his shoulder or yelling at him is the positive punishment, and over time he paws less often on the cross ties.

· Negative punishment: We use negative punishment less often than the other types of reinforcers when we train horses. It is the removal of something pleasant in order to decrease an undesired behavior.

Example: When you are petting a foal, he bites you. You walk away, removing the pleasant stimulus of petting. Over time, the foal stops biting when you are petting him.

Reinforcers aren’t the only thing that influences a horse’s behavior. We also have to consider how often we give those reinforcers. This is called the Schedule of Reinforcement.

A continuous schedule of reinforcement is the most simple: each correct response is followed by a reinforcer. Continuous reinforcement can be hard to maintain, though. Imagine each time your horse starts trotting when you cluck at him you stop him and pet him. You’ll never get far!

Another problem is when you use a continuous schedule of reinforcement, eventually the reinforcers lose their value and the horse doesn’t respond well.

Punishment is the one exception: it works best if you deliver it each time the horse performs an undesired response. Of course, this means you need to pick appropriate punishments. If you have to smack your horse each time he paws in the cross-ties, you can never walk away because you won’t be there to punish him if he starts pawing. However if you yell or growl at your horse as punishment, you can still do that even if you’ve walked away from him. As long as he can hear you, you can still punish him.

In horse training, we often use one of four intermittent schedules of reinforcement:

· Interval: The first correct response that occurs after an amount of time is rewarded.

o Fixed interval: This type of interval response rewards the first correct response that occurs each time after the pre-determined amount of time passes.

Example: When your interval is five minutes, you reward your horse for the first time he performs the desired behavior after five minutes pass.

o Variable interval: You reward the horse for the first desired behavior after different amounts of time pass. Sometimes it might be five minutes, then one minute, then two minutes.

One problem with interval responses is that animals don’t respond consistently. When animals are on a fixed interval schedule of reinforcement, they figure out how much time has to pass before they get rewarded, and they don’t perform the behavior in the beginning of the interval. Then they almost frantically perform the behavior as the end of the interval approaches. For variable intervals, the animal isn’t motivated to perform the response because the reinforcer doesn’t seem tied to the response.

· Ratios: The horse is rewarded after performing the correct behavior a set number of times.

o Fixed ratio: Reinforcement is always given after the horse performs the desired behavior the same number of times.

Example: You dismount and let your horse rest after he performs five correct stops in a row.

o Variable ratio: Reinforcement is given after the horse performs the behavior a random number of times.

Example: Sometimes you reward your horse by ending his training session after he picks up the correct canter lead one time. The next time you don’t end his training session until he picks up the correct canter lead three times. Then you end the next training session after he picks up the correct canter lead twice.

Ratio schedules of reinforcement are the most effective schedules of reinforcement, and good horse trainers typically use a variable ratio of reinforcement (usually without actually knowing that they’re doing it!).

So we now know that reinforcement can increase the likelihood of a response and punishment decreases the likelihood of a response, but what happens when you stop giving reinforcers? Eventually your horse stops performing the behavior you’ve conditioned/trained. This is called extinction or extinguishing a behavior.

When you use a continuous schedule of reinforcement, extinction happens quickly once you stop reinforcing because your horse expects a reward each time he does what you ask. When you stop rewarding him, he has no motivation to keep responding. However with a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement, you horse is used to not being reinforced for each response. He may think that if he performs correctly several times in a row, he’ll finally get rewarded. He’ll eventually stop performing if you never reinforce the behavior, but it will take him longer to catch on that a reward isn’t coming.

Example: You stop praising your horse for stopping when he hears the word “whoa”. He’ll probably still stop quickly after hearing “whoa” a few times. Then he’ll get sloppy and not stop for several seconds. Eventually, he won’t stop at all when he hears the word whoa unless you begin reinforcing him again.

Regardless of the type of reinforcer or the schedule of reinforcement you use, it is important to pay attention to when and how you deliver the reinforcer. To influence how often the behavior occurs, the reinforcer needs to occur immediately after the behavior.

Example: When you press spurs into your horse’s side in an effort to get him to move out quickly, you must release those spurs as soon as he speeds up. If he speeds up and you keep pushing the spurs in his side, he won’t know what you want of him.

Example: When a horse bites you, you must punish him immediately. If you wait 30 seconds and then smack him, he won’t associate the smack with the bite. In fact, he might associate the smack with walking up to you (if he was walking toward you when you smacked him) and stop coming around you.

One of the reasons secondary reinforcers can help us as trainers is that they’re often easy to deliver right away. If your horse stops, it can take you a minute to get off of him and let him rest. But you can immediately praise him with a ‘good boy’ or give him a pet on the neck.

Shaping is used to get a horse to perform complex or unnatural tasks. When you shape a behavior, you begin by rewarding the smallest step in the direction of the behavior you want. When the horse is consistently performing that behavior, you reward closer approximations of the behavior. Over time you reward closer and closer attempts to the desired behavior until you are only rewarding the exact behavior you want.

Example: A horse doesn’t naturally know that you want him to back up when you pull back on the lead rope. So in the beginning, you pull back on the lead rope and your horse might just lean back a little bit. You reinforce that behavior by saying ‘good boy’ or giving him a piece of carrot. When he’s consistently leaning back when you pull on the lead, you ask for a little more. Now you want him to shift his weight onto his back legs. When he’s consistently shifting his weight back in response to your pull on the lead, you then begin to only reinforce him when he picks up one foot and moves it backwards. If you continue reinforcing closer and closer attempts at backing up, eventually your horse backs up when you say ‘back’.

Much of what horse trainers do involves shaping. You expect and reward small tries by greener horses. As a horse’s training progresses, you expect him to respond with more precision and you reward only better responses.

Although this lesson probably seems like it covers a great deal of ground, we’ve only touched the surface of operant conditioning. Fortunately, this is enough to give you a basic understanding of one way horses learn. In our next lesson, we’ll look at classical conditioning, sensitization and desensitization, and how classical conditioning and operant conditioning work together in clicker training.

For the next few days, look at your interactions with the horses you handle, ride, and train and see if you can identify discriminative stimuli, primary and secondary stimuli, and the type of reinforcement you use when you interact with a horse.

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