Behavior Modification Techniques
Lesson
One
EVERY ACTION CAUSES A REACTION
For about 100 years, scientists have been searching for ways to identify
and explain behavior. While we might describe behavior as the way an animal
acts, behind the ivy covered walls of universities, researchers carry this
definition to the "nth" degree.
Behavior is any observable or measurable movement of an organism,
including external and internal movements, and glandular secretions and their
combined effects.
Complicated? You bet. Yet the beauty of science to reduce complicated
systems to simple terms can enable us to explain the whys, whats
and hows of horse behavior. Training horses becomes a
lot clearer and easier when you have a basic understanding of horse behavior
and how to manipulate it.
The foundation of the study of behavior is based upon the fact that all
behavior is influenced by what happens immediately after. To help keep things
simplified, the action or behavior is referred to as the stimulus and what
happens after is called the response.
It
does not manner whether the horse itself, Mother Nature, another animal or a
person provides the response. What does
matter is how the horse feels about the response. Is the response positive or negative to its
well being.
Let's begin by looking at some of the basic instinctive responses of
horses. These behaviors are often called
reflexive behaviors.
A
reflex behavior happens involuntarily when an event causes the horse to
instinctively respond in a given way. For example, a sandstorm triggers the
horse's third eyelid to lower for eye protection. Heat causes horses to sweat
through their skin.
A reflex behavior happens
involuntarily when an event causes the horse to instinctively respond in a
given way.
Reflexive responses like these happen to all members of the equine
family. Most of the time we think of reflexive behaviors as being related to
internal body function of the horse but there are reflex behaviors that must be
dealt with when living with horses.
We
think of fear as being a reflexive response. Fear can be described in terms of
physiological responses. There is a
change in biochemistry of the body that causes some of the body organs
including the brain to act in specific ways.
So anytime you do something that instinctively triggers fear in the
horse, you are creating a reflex behavior.
Most of the time, we try to avoid causing fear in the horse because fear
triggers a horse's flight or fight syndrome.
And, in this mode, horses can be hazardous to humans.
One
of the classic images of creating intense fear in a horse is the old-bronc stomper roping a young horse, tying the frighten
animal down, throwing a saddle on its back and cinching it down. The instinctive response or reflex is for the
horse to try and buck just like it would if a mountain lion jumped on its back.
Kicking can also be a reflex behavior.
A naive horse will often fire out when startled from an unseen threat to
his rear.
This is why horsemen never approach a horse from the rear. A horse cannot see directly behind
itself. And, it is always a good idea to
let a horse know that you are approaching by talking to it or calling its
name. Startling a cat-napping horse may
not be pretty.
Other events that can trigger instinctive
fear in naive horses are:
• Girth pressure
• Stirrups banging on their sides.
• Carrying a bouncing
rider on their back
Not all horses have the same instinctive fear triggers and the outward
expression of the fear may be different between horses. Some horses may run.
Others may buck or collapse.
The
bottom line is that you caused a behavior that caused the horse's body to feel
fear. How the horse handles his fear will be individual. By understanding the stimuli that can cause
instinctive fear in the horse you are one step closer to learning how to
manipulate its behavior.
The first recognized step in learning to manipulate reflex behavior was
taken around 1900 by a Russian scientist, Ivan Pavlov, a Russian scientist
trained in biology and medicine. Pavlov
was studying the digestive system of dogs and their relationship between
salivation and digestion. He learned
that when a dog sees food, he begins to salivate which tells his stomach to get
ready to digest feed.
Ivan Pavlov
Like a true scientist, once he learned the normal sequence of events, he
wanted to see if he could manipulate it.
He wanted to make the dogs salivate without presenting food.
Pavlov presented dogs with food along with the sound of a bell. The dogs salivated. After several joint presentations, Pavlov
presented the dogs with only the sound of the bell, the dogs salivated. The learning process of the dogs associating
the sound of the bell with the food was called Conditioning.
Pavlov had conditioned the reflex behavior of salivation. For this he won the Nobel Prize in
Medicine/Physiology in 1904. His experiment laid the foundation for a type of
learning referred to as Classical Conditioning.
Today, Classical Conditioning is recognized as one of the two basic ways
that learning occurs. The other system,
Operant Conditioning, is based upon the principle that every behavior can be
controlled by the event that immediately follows the action. That is, we can control (or condition) a
behavior by what we do after it occurs.
Operant Conditioning is based upon the principle
that behavior can be controlled by the event that immediately follows.
B.F. Skinner is considered the father of Operant Conditioning. In the first half of the twentieth century in
a laboratory at Harvard, Dr. Skinner began studying learning. His research animal - rats. The task to be learned - a wooden maze box
now referred to as a Skinner box.
He
found that he could manipulate the behavior of the rats as they moved through
the maze. If he rewarded the rats for
making a specific turn in the maze, he increased the chance that the rats would
turn that way each time they ran the maze.
Controlling what happens immediately after a behavior influences the
odds of the behavior reoccurring. Reinforcers
can be either postive or negative but they always
strengthen the behavior. On the other
hand, the goal of punishment is to eliminate a specific behavior.
In
Operant Conditioning, aka horse training, we control the reinforcer. We decide the best way to manipulate the
behavior. We decide which behaviors to
reward and which behaviors should be eliminated.
For
example, a horse bites you. If you immediately (immediately being the operant
word here) deliver a response that intimidates the horse, you decrease the
chance that he will bite you again. This
is an example of punishment.
If you scream, draw back or run away, you
increase the odds that the horse will bite you again as the horse was not punished
(to eliminate behavior) for his act of biting.
It
is time to ask the young 2 year old to trot for the first time. After much urging, he breaks into a few trot
steps. As he is trotting, you praise
him. You are positively rewarding his behavior. If you wait till he stops jogging to reward
his behavior, you are also positively rewarding his behavior - but you are
rewarding the stop. Not the trot.
Training horses (and all other animals including humans) falls mostly
under the category of Operant Conditioning.
Consider some well-known quips from various horse trainers.
• "Hit what comes at
you"
• "You can train a horse to
do anything which doesn't cause him
immediate
pain"
• "Horses perform at their
peak, either due to pain or the
suggestion of
pain"
• "Punish the horse for all
the wrong responses. Do nothing when
he does it right and the horse will figure out
how to do it right"
• "Make the wrong thing hard
and the right thing easy"
While we would disagree with the training philosophies behind some of
these statements, the bottom line is that each comment is saying
Manipulating horse behavior is done by creating
either positive or negative consequences for specific behaviors.
By
understanding this simple principle, you have found the road that leads to
becoming a successful horse trainer. The first step down the road is to
understand the things that have the power to change behavior, the reinforcers.