Abstract
Simple SummaryEquine assisted interventions (EAIs) represent an emerging field of animal assisted interventions (AAIs), employing horses in a wide variety of activities with humans. Based on the socio-emotional competences of this species, which evolved sophisticated communicative skills to interrelate with humans, we here hypothesized the occurrence of an interspecific emotional transfer during interventions. The emotional transfer hypothesis suggests a mutual coordination of emotional states of humans and horses, which are going through a coupling process during the interaction. Even though this mechanism is supported by few existing studies on human-horse emotional fine-tuning, it could play a key role in EAIs. We moreover propose to measure this coordination through monitoring physiological variables with a novel multidisciplinary method. In the future, having an insight on emotional states of animals involved in AAIs could be useful to ameliorate the wellbeing of both animal and human subjects and to better standardize operational strategies.Equine assisted interventions (EAIs) include all therapeutic interventions aimed at improving human wellbeing through the involvement of horses. Due to the prominent emotional involvement traditionally characterizing their relation with humans, horses developed sophisticated communicative skills, which fostered their ability to respond to human emotional states. In this review, we hypothesize that the proximate causation of successful interventions could be human–animal mutual coordination, through which the subjects bodily and, most importantly, emotionally come into contact. We propose that detecting emotions of other individuals and developing the capacity to fine-tune one’s own emotional states accordingly (emotional transfer mechanism), could represent the key engine triggering the positive effects of EAIs. We provide a comprehensive analysis of horses’ socio-emotional competences according to recent literature and we propose a multidisciplinary approach to investigate this inter-specific match. By considering human and horse as a unique coupling system during the interaction, it would be possible to objectively measure the degree of coordination through the analysis of physiological variables of both human and animal. Merging the state of art on human–horse relationship with the application of novel methodologies, could help to improve standardized protocols for animal assisted interventions, with particular regard to the emotional states of subjects involved.
Highlights
Levinson [1] in his book Pet-Oriented Science Psychotherapy mentioned several examples of how animals could help in enhancing therapies with children
This review aimed at providing the key to understand the proximate causation of human–horse relationship, exploring its multifaceted nature from the equine assisted interventions’ perspective, in order to ameliorate the well-being of both the human and animal subjects involved
Starting from the investigation of those mechanisms required for a human–horse encounter to become a ‘relationship’, we defined the socio-emotional world of horses by reviewing the most significant studies on the topic
Summary
Levinson [1] in his book Pet-Oriented Science Psychotherapy mentioned several examples of how animals could help in enhancing therapies with children. The occurrence of repeated encounters in the long term is useful for both motor coordination and socio-emotional engagement between the bonding subjects [19,22] For this reason, most of the interventions imply physical interaction with animals. Due to the prominent emotional involvement and the standardized methodologies characterizing animal assisted interventions, EAIs provide an attracting setting to test new approaches to study human–animal interaction. Scientific literature on this topic has been mostly focused on the human side, categorizing contexts and programs in which working with horses resulted effectively [37,38,39,40]. We listed few notional definitions of human–animal interaction, relationship and bond; later, we moved the focus on the concrete side of the process, from the merely physical up to the emotional aspects of interacting, from both human’s and animal’s perspectives
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