Human Behavior

Observed Behavior: Hand and arm curling. To preface this, I chose to observe my horse trainer during one of the training sessions she was teaching to one of her clients. I have frequently observed this specific motion involving her right arm and right hand extremities. When she becomes frustrated if a client or horse is acting up or not listening to her guidance, she straightens her arm and curls her fingers up into a fist in a singular motion. This behavior corresponds to what I percieve as agitation or frustration. It is a more concealed and less overt expression of internal feelings. 

Coding Method: Duration Coding- bouts of behavior within timed increments.

-----I divided the one hour into 10 minute increments.

MINUTES

1-10: 0

11-20: 0

21-30: 4

31-40: 2

41-50: 6

51-60: 0

Evaluation of the chosen method and results- I believe this duraitonal coding method was best suited for this particular environment and behavior type. The time increments could have been made smaller for more accurate and focused results perhaps. However, I should note that this specific behavior increased as the hour went on. This can be logically explained because in the beginning minutes of a training session, typically the first 20 minutes, the horse and rider are just warming up at a slow walk and trot. Given the high level of the horse and rider in this training session, there was little room for error and critique by my trainer. After the warmup period, the margin of error greatly increases as the pair begin to gallop and jump over high obstacles. This challenges both the athleticism of the equine and the perceptual abilities of the rider. As more errors were made, my trainer curled her hand and straigtned her arm as described in the above definition quite a few times. I would like to conduct this behavioral observation during each of my teammates' lessons in an effort to compare which of them make less errors over the jumping obstacles.