YOUNG SCIENTISTS
Rewarding behaviour
Tom Kennedy reports on how Aoife Stephens, a young scientist and horse owner from Kerry has shown that trainers would get much better results if they stopped punishing their animals.
If training is a problem, don’t blame the horse. All too often trainers resort to imposing punishments rather than offering rewards for good behaviour, and as Aoife Stephens, a transition year student from Presentation Secondary School, Milltown in Kerry observed, the results usually leave a lot to be desired. “Many horses in Ireland,” she said, “are not well trained, even to the extent of basic obedience and good manners” and as the owner of two horses, she became interested in finding out why this is so often the case. She heard about a method called ‘clicker training’, a technique originally developed by psychologists funded by the US military to teach animals, such as pigeons and dolphins, to perform potentially useful tasks. This was a rewards based approach to training, and while that concept is far from new, the psychologists realised that to be effective, any delay, however slight, or confusion in offering the reward had to be avoided. The most common form of reward is a tit-bit of food, but this might not be given fast enough, or the animals might not be that quick to make the connection between a friendly pat and good behaviour, so the psychologists came up with a more instantly recognisable signal in the form of an audible click. It was found that a surprisingly wide variety of animals quickly learned to associate the click with reward, and trainers found that clicking is a highly efficient way to communicate commands. With something as simple and clear as an audible click, said Aoife, there is none of the ambiguity that gives rise to so many problems when animals are trained using a mix of conflicting signals. As she explained, lowering the head is one of the ways to keep a nervous horse calm, so it is an important part of training. The usual practice, she said, is to pull the reigns until the horse lowers its head, and then, when the horse literally gives in, it might get a friendly scratch on the neck or a tit-bit reward. The problem with this approach, she continued, is that it presents the horse with a mixed signal, and that makes it a lot more difficult to understand. Also, and this is more serious, it confuses punishment and reward. Aoife, who has grown up owning and training horses, said that inefficient training leads to a lot of frustration. Poor training is as bad for the horse as it is for the owner. Aoife first heard learned about clicker training from Mary Concannon, who runs a training centre near Tralee in Kerry. (www. irishclickercentre.com). Impressed at seeing the clicker in action, Aoife not only began applying the technique to her own horses, but decided to find out how it compared to traditional methods. She began training a number of horses, dividing these into clickers, and non-clickers, and at this year’s BT Young Scientist and Technology exhibition, she presented her results. Aoife’s study is most impressive, and it gives a detailed break down of how the various approaches to training horses compared. Her main conclusion, backed by practical application, is that clicker training is far more effective than traditional methods, it gets results faster, and the horses become more confident and well behaved. Since starting to use clicker training three years ago, Aoife said the quality of her relationship with horses has completely changed for the better.
Aoife Stephens at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition where she received First Prize in the Intermediate Social and Behavioral category Another significant advantage, she said, is that if a horse is difficult, either overly timid, or aggressive, clicking can be done from a safe distance. As part of her study Aoife approached a number of other horse owners to find out what they thought of clicking. Most owners and trainers, she said, had heard about it, but only a small number had actually tried it out, usually because they did not know enough about applying the technique. Clicker training, she said, is quite well established in the US, and not just for the sort of horses we see in Ireland. In the US, miniature horses are more common, and Aoife said that these have become an alternative to guide dogs for the blind. Clicker trained horses are obedient and well behaved, and unlike dogs, which may have a working life of just eight or nine years, a horse can keep going as a faithful companion for 30 or even more years. The Irish horse industry is important, observed Aoife, yet far too many people are still relying on training methods that are not efficient, so we have lots of disenchanted owners, and insecure animals. “I see clicker training having massive potential for the future development of horse training in Ireland,” she said. Asked if she would like to continue working with horses, her response is an unequivocal, and enthusiastic “Oh yes, I hope so!” Not much doubt about it, Aoife is one of the rising stars of the equestrian world. For horse owners or trainers, Aoife Stephen’s exceptional and clearly presented project report available as a download from http://courtingthehorse.com/aoifeproject.pdf Well worth reading.
SCIENCE SPIN Issue 47 Page 31