What was clever hans

In a paved courtyard surrounded by high apartment houses in the northern part of Berlin, a small crowd had gathered to watch an old high school mathematics teacher demonstrate the brilliance of one of his precocious pupil. The sixty-something math instructor stood proudly with a black, slouch hat covering his thinning white hair.

To his left, stood the pupil—an impressive Russian trotting horse. For more than a decade, Wilhelm von Osten, the instructor, had helped Clever Hans, the horse, to develop a number of cognitive skills.

Not only could Hans count, he could perform arithmetic far beyond the fundamentals. I subtract 9, and have 3 as a remainder.

What is the number I had in mind? Twelve hoof-taps. How many are there now in the hundreds place? Hans would reply promptly with five taps.

Hans also gave evidence of excellent memory, and apparently carried the entire yearly calendar in his head. The versatility of Hans in other directions was baffling. He could recognize tones, recognize people in photographs, tap out the time of the day, distinguish between straw and felt hats, known the different colors, and so on. By some estimates, Hans mental development was similar to a child of 13 or 14 years.

Naturally, Hans aroused curiosity among many psychologists, zoologists and experts in various other fields. This was a time when studies on animal cognition and their mental processes were few and far between.

Hans's abilities appeared on page six of The New York Times. It is believed that the horse was put to use in some capacity in World War I. After , there is no record of him and his fate remains unknown. Due to the large amount of public interest, the German board of education appointed a commission to investigate von Osten's scientific claims.

Philosopher and psychologist Carl Stumpf formed a panel of 13 people, known as the Hans Commission. This commission consisted of a veterinarian, a circus manager, a Cavalry officer, a number of school teachers, and the director of the Berlin zoological gardens. The commission passed off the evaluation to Pfungst, who tested the basis for these claimed abilities by:.

Using a substantial number of trials, Pfungst found that the horse could get the correct answer even if von Osten himself did not ask the questions, ruling out the possibility of fraud. However, the horse got the right answer only when the questioner knew what the answer was, and the horse could see the questioner. He observed that when von Osten knew the answers to the questions, Hans got 89 percent of the answers correct, but when von Osten did not know the answers to the questions, Hans only answered six percent of the questions correctly.

Pfungst then proceeded to examine the behaviour of the questioner in detail, and showed that as the horse's taps approached the right answer, the questioner's posture and facial expression changed in ways that were consistent with an increase in tension, which was released when the horse made the final, correct tap.

This provided a cue that the horse could use to tell it to stop tapping. The social communication systems of horses probably depend on the detection of small postural changes, and this may be why Hans so easily picked up on the cues given by von Osten who seemed to have been entirely unaware that he was providing such cues.

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I enjoyed it very much and I learned a lot too. Best regards,. The presenters were very engaging and clear communicators — Wilhelm Von Osten, a German high school mathematics instructor, thought that people dramatically underestimated the intelligence and reasoning skills of animals. Want to keep learning? This content is taken from The University of Auckland online course,.

This content is taken from The University of Auckland online course. Share this post. See other articles from this course. This article is from the online course:. Join Now. News categories. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Sign in with your library card Please enter your library card number. Related Content Related Overviews non-verbal communication gesture. Reference entries Clever Hans n. All rights reserved.

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