Thinking Horsemanship Forum: Few equine papers in Applied Animal Behaviour Science

just read this and thought there might be something in this. a worrier would be less likely to learn quickly because they worry. duh that would lead to breaks of concentration and exhaustion.Am i being dim or is it not obvious? The real test would be to (using whatever methods) + re for concentration and slowly encourage them. then do some testing once the horse has learned that learning and trying is good.

Hi Joan

No definitely not dim! I agree, I think if you are very worried then it will have an impact on your learning. What niggled me was the implication that it's the stupid horses who engage in stereotypies - which isn't what was said in the paper but kind of implied by the title. And the first paragraph of the intro didn't leave me feeling much better:

The question of whether motor stereotypies may be associated with learning disorders is a highly debated issue, especially in humans, but evidence is still scarce. Mahone et al. (2004) found that 20% of children with motor complex stereotypies exhibited a learning disability. Patients with Tourette syndrome show learning disabilities ([Burd et al., 1992] and [Marsh et al., 2004]) as a result of basal ganglia deficits ([Fattaposta et al., 2005] and [Singer, 2005]). However to what extent motor and learning disorders are related remains an important issue.

But on looking more closely it got better and I saw that they were using their results to reach the conclusion that horses with stereotypies may need their levels of welfare addressed. The last two paragraphs of the paper are:

Our results suggest that further questioning should involve attentional processes and a possible decrease of attention related to stereotypies. The findings that stereotypic horses did not lie down and sleep as much as non-stereotypic animals suggest that they may be focusing on their stereotyped behaviours. Such animals may not be able any more to put their attention to new stimuli. This may also be related to a certain tiredness (lower time sleeping and energy spent in repetitive movements), but also to a loss of interest. Lower motivational levels as well as tiredness do not promote learning new tasks. The importance of sleep for memory ([Karni et al., 1994] and [Peigneux et al., 2001]) and plasticity (Frank et al., 2001) is well known while sleep problems may lead to behavioural disorders in humans (Zuckerman et al., 1987). The importance of sleep and attention in the link between stereotypies and learning is therefore a further promising line.

Finally, this study raises important questions concerning the horses’ use in terms of performance. The findings that learning abilities are impaired in stereotypic horses have important implications and deserves further consideration. Whether or not this effect is mediated by a lower attention, it may be important for riders and especially trainers to be aware that stereotypic horses may need more patience and time in order to learn new tasks. The instrumental task we used has been shown to correlate with evaluations of learning abilities at work in horses (Le Scolan et al., 1997). In view of these findings, more consideration should be given to the performances of stereotypic horses (Miller, 2005).

But as you pointed out, a horse with stereotypies may well have the same ability to learn a task as any other horse, it just needs its environment looked at so that it is given the opportunity to learn. I think the horse's confidence is likely to be a much greater factor than lack of sleep/attention and it's one of my pet rants that so many of these experiments seem to depend so firmly on science rather than the feel/art/common sense of training in real life. Of course, when the task is "opening a chest by raising the lid using the nose" then you might want to question whether any of this is a reasonable trial for a horse's learning ability in the first place! For a shut-down horse unused to offering behaviours for rewards, this is a pretty tough thing to expect them to do (although obviously I have no knowledge as to how these horses were kept/trained prior to the experiment). I don't think I'm explaining myself very well, I think I'm still niggled by the feeling that these horses with stereotypies are being treated as though there is something intrinsically wrong with them, whereas I think most of us will agree that it's more likely that humans have inadvertantly caused them to behave in this way.

Catherine

Few equine papers in Applied Animal Behaviour Science

Another couple

Lower learning abilities in stereotypic horses

Re: Few equine papers in Applied Animal Behaviour Science