Clever Hans Rides Again: Equestrian Therapy for RAD?

Do you remember Clever Hans (or Kluge Hans without translation)? This early- 20th- century performing horse almost certainly turned up in your introductory psychology textbook, if you had one-- and he’s usually seen in sociology and education books too. Hans, a handsome stallion, was exhibited by his owner because he could do arithmetic. The owner would ask audiences to present Hans with arithmetic problems. (These were simple number problems, not compound interest or anything very serious; still, they were more than you’d expect of the average horse.) Hans would listen, and then stamp out the answer with his forefoot: 22 + 11= 33 stamps. The owner had no idea how Hans managed this.

Careful observation, of course, showed that Hans really couldn’t do arithmetic. Instead, his owner, unaware of his own actions, was signaling to Hans by tiny movements when to stomp and when to stop. If the owner didn’t know the answer, Hans couldn’t do that problem.

The message that textbooks have passed on from Clever Hans is that it’s all too easy to influence behavior and to bias the results of an experiment, even if you are trying to be perfectly honest. That’s one of the reasons why people like me keep on and on about the (admittedly dreary) rules of empirical research. It’s also why we find it so difficult to accept personal experiences as evidence, in the absence of more reliable information.

But here’s the real reason I thought of Clever Hans today. I received an e-mail from a colleague, giving me another e-mail from a person I don’t know. (I’m not going to name either of these people, so I can’t cite a source on this one.) The two of them had been discussing the “fringe” child psychotherapy called Attachment Therapy and the fact that a leader in that treatment was going to run a “camp” in their state. One of the correspondents, a conventional psychotherapist, noted that she had a child patient who attended “equestrian therapy” sessions recommended by Attachment Therapists for children with Reactive Attachment Disorder. The treatment was paid for by the state family services department. The therapist recounted the story told her by this child and the child’s mother:

“The instructor reports herself as having been a RAD kid [that is, she believes she had reactive Attachment Disorder as a child]. She puts kids on different horses because each horse can perceive what the child is thinking and feeling. Then she stops the horse and asks the child ‘Is there anything you need to tell me?’ According to the parent of my client, the horse nods his head ‘yes’ if the child lies. Then they pry until the child tells the truth. She has told my client that she [the child] does not have bipolar disorder (she has [five diagnoses] and is on medication and was in residential [treatment] for 2 years but is instead ‘just RAD’. … She keeps nagging my client to talk about her childhood (client is adopted) and client refuses. My client told her, ‘You are not my therapist’. The instructor told her, ‘When you are here I am your therapist.’ She also has client do her dishes and light housework as client likes to hang out there after school. This instructor referred them to a RAD group in [a neighboring town]. “

It would appear that family services ought to be paying for this treatment in oats and sugar lumps, as the horse is supposed to be a co-therapist! But, folks, let’s think it through. Clever Hans couldn’t really do arithmetic. Can this therapy horse actually tell whether someone is lying? Isn’t it more likely that a signal, possibly unintentional, from the instructor, determines whether the horse nods or not? And what is the effect on the child’s trust in other people and understanding of the world when she’s informed that horses know whether you tell the truth? If a family chose to pay for this experience on their own, there’s little anyone can or perhaps should do about it. But how is it that public money can be spent on such an enterprise?

Here is a list of my concerns. 1. Obviously, the instructor is not being truthful about the horse’s behavior, although I suppose she may think she is. 2. The instructor does not understand the differences between her training and abilities and those of a professional; this is why we have licensing and supervision. 3. The instructor is taking advantage of her position to make inappropriate statements contradicting the information the family has received from knowledgeable persons. 4. The instructor wants to be in the position of a therapist, but lacks understanding of professional ethics, as we see in her dual relationship with the child; it is not suitable for her to allow the child to hang around, and certainly not for her to put the child to work. A neighbor might do this, but a professional therapist would not. 5. The instructor appears to believe that her own childhood experiences are relevant and appropriate information to disclose to clients, whereas they are neither. 6. The instructor makes the common mistake of assuming that all emotional disturbances have a background in early childhood. 7. Equestrian therapy was devised for children with physical disorders like cerebral palsy, who benefited from the stretching involved; that does not mean that all disorders of mind and nervous system can be treated this way.

My horse says this is a bad deal.