Test performance

[miked]

Van wrote " When I see ‘perfection’ at Dan tests… it’s OK…but it only shows me that the candidate has rehearsed his compulsories well. ..But then I think…what if under stress…when under the influence of the chemical cocktail…and when his skills plunge to about 50% of what they usually are in the dojo? How will he recover and continue on?

So when I see someone at a test make a blunder…I also look at he handles it in recovery... I place lots of value on this recovery.
------------------------------------------------------
Bill replied: "I've probably watched about 10,000 people doing stuff at a test. By now your brain is in autopilot, watching the well-rehearsed routines and listing the technical errors that you've seen committed thousands and thousands of times before. Maybe you're jotting down little check and x marks by their name on a sheet of paper.

And then somebody goofs.

My brain kicks out of alpha wave mode.

Candidate is under stress and schit has just happened. How do they handle it? Better yet, their partner makes a major blunder in their yakusoku kumite. They do "the wrong" attack. What happens? Does the recipient receive the phantom technique or do they handle what the person actually threw at them? Can they make it look like they meant it all along?

When it comes to over-choreographed tests, I place a LOT more value in these hiccups than I do on the rest of the test. This is what separates the eagles from the mockingbirds."
----------------------------------------------------------

It appears that each of you are discussing two major points:

A) degradation of performance caused by stress and
B) reaction/response to an unanticipated event while under stress

(If these two points are not sufficiently clear or if more needs to be added, please advise.)

With regards to any dan test, it appears that technical proficiency is the most significant factor in whether a candidate should pass or fail. Of course, the link between mind set and physicality is on display during the test.

In a previous example, Bill talked about "flubbing" of kata. Hey, I suspect that we have all done this at one time or another.

Bill and Van, would you please go through the reasons for the mental disconnect. Assuming competency, aside from the chemical cocktail dump, are there other reasons that this happens?

Contrast a dan test with a concert piano performance. I am sure that concert pianists, at times "flub" notes, I believe that the vast majority of concert goers do not pick up on these "flubs" as the pianists "recover" very quickly.

How do we, as practitioners, learn this recovery process?

Regards,

Mike DeDonato
mjdcgb@ca.rr.com
www.uechi-la.org

[robb buckland]

Van.."So when I see someone at a test make a blunder…I also look at he handles it in recovery... I place lots of value on this recovery.."

THANK GOODNESS !!!

[MikeK]

Bill and Van, would you please go through the reasons for the mental disconnect. Assuming competency, aside from the chemical cocktail dump, are there other reasons that this happens?

Contrast a dan test with a concert piano performance. I am sure that concert pianists, at times "flub" notes, I believe that the vast majority of concert goers do not pick up on these "flubs" as the pianists "recover" very quickly.

How do we, as practitioners, learn this recovery process?

Hi Mike,
One reason I've seen and also experienced it both in MA and playing music is that you start thinking too darn much instead of just doing it. One way to recover is to just laugh it off and keep going.

[Bill Glasheen]

Good response, Mike K.

This will take more than a few seconds to respond. Be right back!

- Bill

[Van Canna]

Brain Farts!! Stop laughing. This is real science, dammit.
by Tori Deaux on April 24, 2008

Don’t try to deny it, I know you’ve had them - everyone does - those embarrassing instants of mind-numbing stupidity. You’re faced with a task, question or action that you’ve done a thousand times, and yet, you flub it.

Even worse, you may even recognize the problem *as you make it*, you may know that you’re about to screw up colossally, and yet, you’re unable to stop it. Brain fart. <cue obnoxious sound file>

Turns out, it’s more than just a cutesy way of explaining away our embarrassment over mental glitches. Brain farts are real. No, the brain doesn’t actually belch noxious fumes, but still — they are real, measurable events in the brain, and even more interesting, they’re predictable. Here’s the deal:

Researchers were looking in the brain for cues that a mistake was being made - hoping to spot some sort of activity blip that signaled an error, perhaps an instantaneous loss of concentration.


So participants in the study were given a simple, monotonous game to play, while the activity in their brain was measured (via fMRI, for those of you who know about such things.)

But there was no single blip or hiccup at the instant of the error. Instead, there was a complicated pattern of abnormal brain behavior. Even more surprisingly? The pattern showed up as much as 30 seconds before the mistake was made.

30 seconds: That’s a *really* long time, in speed-of-thought terms.

So what happened in those 30 seconds?

Even though the participants were alert and focused on their task, parts of the brain usually associated with relaxation began to light up.

At the same time, parts of the brain associated with cognitive control and sustained attention began to turn off. So even though they intended to stay alert, their brain was shutting down, forcing them into a less focused state.

So even though the person was paying attention, their brain stopped paying attention.

Tada. Brain fart.

The researchers think the brain may be shutting down to conserve energy. Since repetative, familar tasks don’t require much processing power, the brain tries to go into a sort of autopilot mode.

Sometimes it goes too far, and the result is a mental glitch. Once the participants made and recognized their mistakes, the abnormal patterns vanished - apparently the error woke the brain back up, letting it know it had gone a step too far in its efforts at energy conservation.

With that all important 30 second factor, it might be possible to predict and prevent critical brain fart errors in high risk situations. ( like behind the wheel of a car or at the controls of an airplane.)

If the brain activity involved can be detected by lightweight, portable monitors, a warning could be sounded that would “wake up” the brain, hopefully before the mistake was made.

[Bill Glasheen]

Mike D

You are correct that there are two things of concern here.

The first is the highly choreographed test vs. our need to see if the candidate is capable of responding to an unknown, spontaneous, or willfully unpredictable threat. The closest thing we have to evaluating the ability to apply martial knowledge free-form is the the jiyu kumite. And even that gets highly structured, what with the rules and in many cases known sparring partners.

One of many criticisms of yakusoku kumite is that its prearranged nature can lead people to attacking the blocks and to starting the interception (uke) techniques before the intent of attack is even displayed. Sometimes when I'm working with someone I can even see them throw their attack as if it's being redirected, or sense that the partner is nowhere near close enough to hit me in the first place. If I'M the uke, I'll just drop my hands by my side and let the non-attack happen, making it perfectly clear to the tori that their technique (of doom) had no chance of connecting. But of course WE can't jump in there and make these things happen as judges on the side.

So when person A has a brain fart in a partner exercise, suddenly we have an opportunity to see if person B responds to the technique that A should have thrown (Wrong!!!) or responds to what's actually coming at him/her (Ding ding ding ding!!!). Deftly handling the unexpected demonstrates proper skill development, mushin, and zanshin. It shows that the person has assimilated principles learned from the patterned exercises and can run with them.

Or not... Sometimes person A's brain fart shows that neither person is wearing a gi (so to speak). We're just looking at two grown men in tutus. All fluff, but no stuff.



Nice shoes...

And then there's the brain fart under pressure thing.

The first real studies in the area of Survival Stress Reaction (SSR) as it related to combat performance, were conducted in the 1930’s. This study noted that soldiers, who were sending Morse code (fine/complex motor skill) during combat situations, had much more difficulty in doing so when compared to non-combat environments.

- The Anatomy of Fear

By now we know a LOT more about the complete loss of fine motor skills during life-threatening situations, and some (or all) loss of complex motor skills. The degree of the latter depends a lot upon the individual and/or the amount of training they've had trying to perform under extreme stress.

We also know that extreme levels of stress affect heart-rate, blood pressure, respiration, regional blood flow, clotting rate, depth perception, field of view, auditory perception, time perception, proprioception, and mental acuity.

A slight aside...

I remember once being on a date and noting that my date's pupils were extremely dilated. As I let Nature happen, my photographer's mind made a mental note that her lenses were operating in wide-open aperture mode. I was in her field of view, and that was it. The rest of life was just a blur to her. Do you know what that meant? Yup... I was going to get lucky. Yea boy!

Back to the subject at hand...

Humans respond to stress in myriad ways. Sometimes you can see it from the outside. Sometimes people are skilled at covering it up. But the SSR happens to all of us - to some degree - when we're facing the grim reaper.

There is an optimal place in that SSR zone. If you've had calculus, this is like a min/max problem. You want the best of the SSR (increased strength of core muscles, focusing on the task at hand) and you want to avoid the worst (pathalogically altered perceptions, deer-in-the-headlights syndrome, etc.). You want to find the sweet spot. No matter what is happening around, you, you want to stay in that sweet spot.

And your training should reflect an ability to capitalize on that sweet spot. Among other things, your techniques should be drawing from core strength. You want to demonstrate that you are compensating for your altered physiologic state (hence the three nukite thrusts in three different directions in Seisan kata).

Have you taken your martial material into the danger zone? After all, this is a MARTIAL art, right?

Have you shown an ability not to go beyond the sweet spot where all your physical and mental skills go to hell in a handbasket? Predators understand this. It's why they curse at you, and try in myrad ways to intimidate you. They want to turn you into quivering mass of goo so you are an easy day on their job.

Some teachers think they're doing their students a favor by making the test seem like no big deal. It's cool... You should already deserve the belt before you go to the test. This is just a formality. Yada, yada yada... Lots of feel-good, it's gonna be OK stuff.

And me? First of all, I value my training and I hope my students value theirs. Having reached this important beginner stage of a shodan IS a big deal to me. It had better be to you, or I have failed in transferring anything significant.

But more importantly... The formality is all part of the shtick. We sit as stern experts behind a table in our best uniforms with all our fancy belts around our waists. There is ritual to an extreme. The watching audience (the more the better) is off to the side. Cameras click and whir. Our faces show no hint of being pleased. This is business, and you damn well better impress us. Or not...

We are the predator, trying to make you schit your pants. Whatcha gonna do, eh? Show me what you got. Can you perform under this teeny, tiny little bit of stress we create in a formal testing atmosphere? Or are you going to wet your pants in front of us all?

This isn't a feel-good thing. *I* want to trip you up. If you came in the front door of the dojo to learn self-defense, it is the kindest thing we can do for you. Because what the boogeyman has waiting for you will make this seem like a walk in the park.

Cry in the dojo; laugh on the battlefield

That was the motto of one of my students. He "got" it.

Nobody is asking the student not to respond to the stress. That is both unrealistic and non-ideal. What we want to see is your ability optimally to perform martial tasks while under stress. That's what it's all about.

Are we to expect things to be perfect when the poop hits the rotating propeller? Forgetaboutit! Mistakes happen; abilities are altered. What you do when all this is happening and life isn't warm and fuzzy is what separates the warriors from the pretenders.

- Bill

[robb buckland]

"I remember once being on a date and noting that my date's pupils were extremely dilated. As I let Nature happen, my photographer's mind made a mental note that her lenses were operating in wide-open aperture mode. I was in her field of view, and that was it. The rest of life was just a blur to her. Do you know what that meant? Yup... I was going to get lucky. Yea boy! "

Atta boy sensei !!!!

[MikeK]

Even though the participants were alert and focused on their task, parts of the brain usually associated with relaxation began to light up.

At the same time, parts of the brain associated with cognitive control and sustained attention began to turn off. So even though they intended to stay alert, their brain was shutting down, forcing them into a less focused state.

The quote above strikes me as key to the brain lock. We make slight mistakes all day long doing both simple and complex tasks, but we recover often in just a second or less and keep on keeping on without a hitch. Often we even focus on complex tasks under stress without a brain lock. So I have to think that it isn't stress that causes the brain lock but the brain trying to be in two states at once. The person is trying to focus on how to do a task that the mind has already moved to almost autopilot. By focusing we're slamming head on into our training. A form of cognitive dissonance?

The guy I train with is always saying, and demonstrating with us, that the body will do it if the mind doesn't f$%k it up.

[MikeK]

But more importantly... The formality is all part of the shtick. We sit as stern experts behind a table in our best uniforms with all our fancy belts around our waists. There is ritual to an extreme. The watching audience (the more the better) is off to the side. Cameras click and whir. Our faces show no hint of being pleased. This is business, and you damn well better impress us. Or not...

I wonder if you took two equally trained and talented people but one treated the testers as important and the other literally flipped them the bird, who would perform better.

[Bill Glasheen]

That's an interesting thought, Mike.

This is complicated...

Brain farts happen. Brain farts under life-threatening situations can be fatal, so obviously we don't want them to happen. And if they do, well we need to be able to recover deftly - just like we would in normal life.

Whether or not deer-in-the-headlamps or severe brain farts are the same physiologic mechanism as mentioned above remains to be seen. Frankly I don't know. Honesty is the best policy. But we know that life-threatening brain locks do happen under stress, and stress can cause it.

The guy I train with is always saying, and demonstrating with us, that the body will do it if the mind doesn't f$%k it up.

If what he is trying to communicate is the same thing that I am aware of, then I agree.

Basically your body does have low-brain responses to imminent danger. For example there are myriad flinch responses. If we don't know what we are doing and we teach responses to life-threatening attacks that are dissonant with what the low brain will have us do, then our TRAINING very well may create brain lock. It's a life-threatening form of cognitive dissonance, where the low brain is pulling in one direction and the training brain is pulling elsewhere.

What I try to do with my students is to show the flinch response within the trained responses and our martial stances. If you do that - repeatedly - then you can lock your training in with the instruction set you were born with. That means that training very well may result in you doing the right thing before you realized you did it, because low brain responses flow seamlessly into upper brain training. That's the Platonic ideal we all seek.

I wonder if you took two equally trained and talented people but one treated the testers as important and the other literally flipped them the bird, who would perform better.

That would depend a lot upon whether certain "lions of Uechi" were on the testing board.



- Bill

[MikeK]

He's not talking about flinch or low brain, but it would include those also. What he's saying is if the training is ingrained then thinking about it will work against you. If you're training then you have to trust your training and let the training work. When the crap is hitting the fan is a bad time to try to analyze what's going on and come up with a good solution.

[robb buckland]

"That would depend a lot upon whether certain "lions of Uechi" were on the testing board. "

Oh to be a fly on that wall !!

[Van Canna]

I remember once being on a date and noting that my date's pupils were extremely dilated.

I often wonder why my cat’s eyes get so dilated as to appear all black…yet he has beautiful green eyes…

Funny…it seems that at times when I bent down to pet him…he shows fear and dilates his pupils…but most other times he rolls on his back…and exposes his belly asking for a belly rub…

Any ideas, anyone?

Take a look at this…to understand what a human body experiences under stress….

http://tinyurl.com/nyavfv

Most of the system’s sensors are commercially available. An eye tracker measures blinks, gaze direction, and pupil dilation. Two separate devices track heart rate and respiration.

A thermal camera measures the way heat changes on a person’s face. And underfoot, an accessory normally used with the Nintendo Wii gaming system, has been repurposed to detect fidgeting.

Burns said being able to simultaneously observe a suite of traits - such as slight variations in the interval between heartbeats, the way a person’s pupils dilate, the way the heat on their face changes, or whether they stop moving when asked a certain question - makes the system more accurate.

They also plan to test whether the software can distinguish malicious intent from other things that fluster a person. In the future, for example, experiments might include subjects who have to run to get to the screening checkpoint, or have an initial experience with a rude guard.

Hardened terrorists might be able to control their heartbeat or breath, but researchers say that is one reason they are looking at multiple traits thought to be involuntary. Even if someone could control many physiological factors, researchers said that a person who lacked normal bodily reactions to questions would also raise a red flag.

[Bill Glasheen]

The relationship between pupil size and neurohormonal status is complex. Let's just say that pupil size is about more than the body responding to light.

Everyone knows that pupils dilate in the dark, but there's more to it than meets the eye. In the 1960s, the psychologist Eckhard Hess discovered that pupils also dilate when people are aroused or emotionally charged. Women's pupils dilated when they saw images of children or male nudes, and men's pupils dilated when they saw female nudes. It's an involuntary reflex of the sympathetic nervous system.

Pupil size is also detected unconsciously. When Hess asked men to judge two pictures of a woman that were identical in every way but the woman's pupil size, the guys overwhelmingly preferred the version with larger pupils. Forced to explain why they thought the woman was more attractive in that picture, the men shrugged and said she just seemed prettier and more feminine. No one consciously noticed the difference in her pupils.

Evolutionarily speaking, men prefer big, gaping pupils because they're a sign of arousal and receptivity. If your pupils are dilated when you're talking to a guy (and you're not drunk or drugged), it's a sign that you're attracted to him. Your pupils dilate widest around ovulation, the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle, and when you're fairly young. As you grow older, your pupils can't dilate as much as they did in childhood and young adulthood. Big pupils are cues of youth, fertility, and receptivity—in the subconscious male mind, a sight to behold.

Women, meanwhile, are less enthusiastic about men with big pupils. A study at York University in Canada found that gals prefer guys with medium-sized pupils. While men regard pupil dilation as a promising sign of arousal, women are often suspicious of it. A wound-up, wild-eyed guy might force you to have sex, or he might be madly overpossessive or somehow out of control. (The few women who preferred men with big pupils tended to also prefer "bad boys.") If a man's pupils are too big, a woman's might contract.

- Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes?
Bodies, Behavior, and Brains--the Science Behind Sex, Love, and Attraction

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

The airport security equipment is measuring the changes in multiple body systems. This is the kind of stuff that would get my grad school advisor excited. We were being trained as systems physiologists. Understanding the relationship between physiologic state and the response of multiple systems to it was what it was all about.

I did an entire PhD dissertation on "variations in the interval between heartbeats" (see Van's cited article above). And for what it's worth, I was simultaneously measuring all the other parameters that these airport screening devices were detecting. My goal was to develop devices which detected a body going into a medically unfortunate state. But these data sources are also windows into the brain. In the end, it's about developing the pattern recognition systems that detect whatever it is you're looking for.

- Bill