TSS: Here is one of the first scientific journal articles to use a squiggle (horse~rider) in its title. Using coordination dynamics to understand a complementary pair outside the field of coordination dynamics itself is an example of the “CD of CP” strategy. Here is an excerpt from the introduction, giving you the basic idea of the study:
“However, the nature of the coordination between the rider and the horse, a partnership that has spanned centuries (Minetti, 2003), remains elusive. Adding the rider to the horse raises some new problems. What are the essential features of the functional coordination between two such highly complex systems that differ on so many dimensions, one of which (the rider) must adapt to the horse’s motion at the same time as he or she tries to gain and achieve control? Skill of the rider and training of the horse are ubiquitous components of that particular cooperation. The results of previous work have shown that a skilled rider is able to stabilize a horse trotting on a treadmill (Peham, Licka, Schobesberger, & Mescham, 2004), but, thus far, no one has studied the mutual interaction between rider and horse in terms of their coordination dynamics—that is, as an informationally coupled dynamical system. For that reason, we compared two riders of different skill levels, one an expert in dressage and the other a hobby rider who occasionally practices dressage at a lower level.”
by J. Lagarde, J. A. S.Kelso, C. Peham and T. Licka Journal of Motor Behavior, 1996, Vol. 28, No. 1, pdf
