The Sherwood Report Using Science to See a Forest in the Trees
In Your Sight....
• If someone's distressed, remove as many distractions as
possible. Visual or otherwise.
• Stress-related narrowing of attention may hit teams especially
hard: you're supposed to make sure that teammates haven't missed
anything, but you aren't even perceiving your own missed cues, let
alone acting on them.
• Mental fatigue weakens our ability to maintain top-down/
goal-driven attention. Instead, we become more susceptible to
external stimuli.
• When learning, the more an instructor says, "Pay attention to
this," the narrower the student's focus. But increased vigilance for
one particular thing reduces the student's ability to see other
relevant things in the environment.
Are You Paying Attention?
"[T]he most critical factor for high-level performance is
attention to the right things at the right time," according to
Janelle and Hatfield, Military Psychology (2008). And it's not just
lasering in on one thing – it's also screening out distractors, too.
"Get out of your head": The story of training is you do something
until it's automatic: bad things happen if you "think too much." But
automaticity's value isn't about mindlessness; it's that the brain has
become more efficient at that hyper-familiar task. And since that
takes less effort (measured by lower alpha in EEGs), the brain is able
to pay more attention to what really matters – including crucial
changes in the environment – allowing you to be fluid, flexible, and
dynamic in the moment.
Attention is the difference between "near elite Olympians" and
"elite Olympians." In studies of Olympic pistol shooters and
biathletes, in the milliseconds before firing, the researchers describe
the "near elite" as switching their gaze between their guns and a
target. But the "elite" have a quiet eye: they only look at the target,
and, if need be, move guns into view.
All his life has he looked away.... Never his mind on where he
was: Apparently we're all like young Skywalker. Harvard scientists did an iPhone study and found we're thinking about something other than
what we're doing, almost 50% of the time, and along with that, increased inattention predicts a rise in unhappiness. Fascinatingly, the
researchers concluded it's not that we distract ourselves when we're unhappy because of what we're doing. It's that we're unhappy because
we're not thinking about what we're doing.
Quick Shots:
• Attention is top-down – volitional, cognitive and driven by
the prefrontal cortex – or bottom-up – involuntary / driven by
external stimuli that activate the amygdala and other areas of the
"reptilian brain."
• Under stress, our visual field of attention narrows. Then,
worried we're missing something, we scan around more, trying see
what's on the periphery. But this backfires, as we become more
distracted by irrelevant or threatening things in the environment.
For example,
• In a 2015 University of Exeter study of commercial pilots,
during a simulation licensing exam, the pilots were told in
advance the simulation was of an engine failure. However, if pilots
were anxious about the exam, they spent more time looking at the
gauges saying the engine was dead, when they should have been
looking out the cockpit window.
• Meanwhile, in a 2012 Virginia Tech experiment designed to
induce panic (participants were asked to breathe in a mixture of
35% CO2/65% O2), those with better attentional control were
less distressed and fearful while experiencing CO2's effects.
On Target: Smack That Gugl?
In a study published earlier this month, Duke University and US
Army researchers concluded poor performance in first-person
shooter video games (e.g. shooting victims, not bad guys) was due to
cognitive impulsivity: a player couldn't stop himself from a planned
motor response, even after he'd realized the mistake. At a certain
point, there was a disconnect between his attention and action. Or
in the researchers' words, the problem was "an itchy brain," not "an
itchy trigger finger." (Think the batter who can't stop from
swinging, even though he knows a pitch is high.)
Following a baseline assessment on a shooting video game, study
participants were asked to play "Smack That Gugl!" – an iPad game
where you hit some "Gugls" and refrain from hitting others – and
another computer game for an hour for 4 days. Then they did a
retest. Those who'd played the iPad game made fewer mistakes in
the shooting game: they better controlled their impulsivity.
About me: I've co-authored two New York Times bestsellers, Top Dog:
The Science of Winning and Losing and NurtureShock, and I've written
for the New York Times, Newsweek, Time, New York, ESPN and more.