Psychology, I think

Andrew-R

Andrew-R

Nature's Best Friend
http://hauteecole.ru/en/news/?cat=1




"NHE Representatives Donna Condrey-Miller and Edward Pershwitz talk about the Significance of the Horse’s Freedom to Say “No” and its Effect on the Horse Saying “Yes”




<small>Sunday, January 28th, 2018"

and article just below this one .... I think it touches this everpresent topic about contest, and bring it to full-time thinking/life.</small>




 




<small>Next is just some article I found..inspiring, in some sense? I don't know this story in detail, nor I have steam for following (researching) it ....</small>




https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/10/horse-lives-in-house-germany_n_4762942.html




 




 


 
Congratulations.      I've been trying to explain that to people for 30 odd years now.       The next step is teaching the horse that he can ask for things and you will say yes or no as the moment requires.     

 
By "asking" here you mean pointing at objects/directions? I tried to look up what 'modern science' thinks about versatibility of sounds horses consciously can made, but apparently humans like to think they not very flexible in this department. Can be human thing, not real limitation..but for now I just accepted horses are not dolphins and tried to imagine something remotely working .....


On teaching I was captivated by concept put forward by Ken - you basically show minimal example of how your comm. system works, and invite non-human being(s) to use it together...It might be interesting to note Ken found this idea in Irene Pepperberg's scientific works, and she herself  copied it from observations on how learning most likely works...

http://www.whales.org.au/published/levasseur/levass3b.html



I'm not sure if you had something like this or something much simpler in your mind. I was mostly circling around idea of travel-together, so each road fork for example gives you opportunity to ask for directions.. Objects probably may work OK for horses, I just try to avoid in my dolphin/cetacea thinking into failing into _objects only_ way of language use (as it was done in scientific experiments..at least most-known of them), because for me emotional/internal/intentional aspect of being much more important info to try and communicate (in both directions)...


Nevzorov himself showed some interest in more advanced communications with horses, but as far as I get it was more though-provoking piece for human viewers, and it barely progressed ( I think alaphabet by itself is too small piece of language to bootstrap language use from, in non-humans..but some kind of object card, items, actions and more ..invisible concepts should be ok. Most defining language feature is its open nature, so you can create new sentences out of even just few basic building blocks ...)


<a class="ipsAttachLink" href="//www.zoowg.net/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=3126">Kanzi_2005_remarks.doc</a>
 
For example   http://www.appliedanimalbehaviour.com/article/S0168-1591(16)30219-2/fulltext




My horse and I have a pidgin composed primarily of gestures and actions used to represent common choices.       We started it when I taught him that I would endeavor to satisfy any itch or irritation that he would point to with his nose.      What we do is no where near as important as the symbolism in his ability to ask and receive from me.      It moves our relationship much closer to equality.        Not surprisingly, equality is an important goal to a proud, strong willed individual like a stallion.


 
well, thanks for effort, what else I can say!


as you probably noted, I have strong distaste for operant conditioning BUT at the same time I've read enough of history for learning how it was discovered...so, for example when I think my dog is amazing dog because  we achieved some good synchronization - i don't see any need to block myself from radiating this feeling. This is reward, yes, but in the same way as it used by all live beings (ok, probably so-called social beings actually more sensitive to this).... and of course, main point here "Horses can!" as opposed to more pessimistic positions.. And, again, having truely..good relations is more important than rewriting them in  some cool new method X (while some ideas I think can infiltrate, and provide way forward where it was previously assumed impossible...)

 
and there was another figure I was reading on less mainstream views on non-humans, to my surprise I found little horse-related quote at the top of article, upon re-reading today

http://leecharleskelleysblog.blogspot.ru/2013/10/charles-darwin-and-dominance-meme-part-2.html




----------quote--------
[font=Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif]“Although it has been shown that in horses … dominance hierarchies are so poorly developed as to be invisible, needing artificially created competition to develop, … there is a reluctance on the parts of both trainers and some scientists to abandon human attitudes about dominance.”
[/font]



-----end of quote------


Guess main idea remain constant - look at real beings, and align "book knowledge" with this, not other way around.....




 


 
I think the biggest problem in most animal related research is that animals are assumed to be interchangeable stimulus/response blackboxes.     Of course there are dominance hierarchies.      But not all individuals compete on the same level or in the same fashion.       Trainers have bad habits of assuming that any technique that yields a good result on one horse will always work on other horses.      I think that the "blanket study" above is significant because a random selection of horses all demonstrated complex understanding of abstract symbols.       The pupils learn despite their teachers sometimes.

 
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