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Albert Bandura's observational learning, also known as imitation or modeling, occurs when a person observes and imitates another's behavior. It is a quicker process than operant conditioning. A well-known example is the Bobo doll study, where children who saw an adult acting aggressively towards the doll were more likely to act aggressively when left alone, compared to those who observed a nonaggressive adult. Many psychologists view observational learning as a form of latent learning...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 29, 2025

Recording Single Neurons' Action Potentials from Freely Moving Pigeons Across Three Stages of Learning
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Horses Failed to Learn from Humans by Observation.

Maria Vilain Rørvang1, Tina Bach Nielsen2, Janne Winther Christensen2

  • 1Department Biosystems and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 23053 Alnarp, Sweden.

Animals : an Open Access Journal From MDPI
|February 5, 2020
PubMed
Summary

Horses did not learn a new task by observing human demonstrations, even with controls for stimulus enhancement. This suggests limitations in inter-species social learning for horses in this context.

Keywords:
cognitionhorseinter-speciessocial learningsocial transmissiontrainingwelfare

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Area of Science:

  • Animal behavior
  • Ethology
  • Cognitive ethology

Background:

  • Animals learn behaviors through individual and social learning.
  • Previous studies on horses' inter-species social learning yielded conflicting results.
  • This study addresses conflicting findings by including a control for stimulus enhancement.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if horses can learn an instrumental task by observing human demonstrations.
  • To control for stimulus enhancement in assessing social learning in horses.
  • To analyze horse behavior, including task success, apparatus interaction, and frustration indicators.

Main Methods:

  • One human demonstrator and thirty horses were used.
  • Horses were randomly assigned to full demonstration, partial demonstration, or no demonstration groups.
  • The task involved touching an object to open a feed box for a reward.

Main Results:

  • Horses observing full or partial human demonstrations were not more successful than the control group.
  • No significant difference in task success was found between groups.
  • Horses failing to solve the task showed more frustration-related behaviors.

Conclusions:

  • Horses did not demonstrate social learning of the instrumental task through human observation in this study.
  • Stimulus enhancement did not appear to facilitate learning in this experimental setup.
  • Further research is needed to understand the nuances of social learning in horses.