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July 28, 2009, 02:37 PM | #1 |
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The science of situational awareness?
This article has some interesting information on what factors contribute to "situational awareness," loosely defined as the ability to perceive threats. Some unsurprising findings, such as that training helps, and stress and anxiety hurt... but it seems there are big individual differences in things like the visual ability to detect little things that are out of whack, and the ability to pay attention to an emotional response to things being out of whack -- given that the emotional response may occur before you're consciously aware that something is wrong...
Just an excerpt: In Battle, Hunches Prove to Be ValuableUmm, well, they probably involve both... hate folks who think everything's either/or....
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July 28, 2009, 03:11 PM | #2 |
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i think its both. the confidence thing helps a crap ton imo. but training raises confidence. its a thin line
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July 28, 2009, 03:12 PM | #3 | |
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It was the eradication of venomous snakes that caused the typical loss of situational awareness!!! The proof I am right is the low number of snake bit urbanites! If folks had to face risk with every step they would be much more aware... Unfortunately some of us realize this risk is most likely going to be from a human who is preying upon the innocent folks... Brent |
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July 29, 2009, 09:20 AM | #4 |
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I agree, to make it either/or is a poor way to approach the question.
Some people are better athletes than others, some better chess players, and some better soldiers. While there's some overlap between the skills of all three, the best chess player isn't going to be the best soldier, and the most fit/sharp soldier isn't going to be the best athlete. There's a set of genetic components, training, and mental state that all contribute to one's success in a particular field. Likewise, there's a reason people who make it to be Navy SEALs do so. They have a particular set of qualities that make the challenge a little less intimidating than for those who drop out. That isn't to say that people who train harder than anybody else and put themselves in a mental state only focused on becoming a SEAL can't make it through as well. There's an old sports saying, that "hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard." To put it another way, somebody with a great set of genetics to start is going to benefit more from specialized training than somebody whose baseline is lower. A person with excellent memory, some creativity, patience and spacial visualization is likely to be a better chess player naturally than somebody with poor memory, although probably not much better. With coaching, I imagine the skilled person will make significantly more progress than the non-skilled. Another piece of this is learning styles. Different people learn different ways. It may be that people who become SEALs all learn in similar ways, and so their training is extremely effective. The aggregate of Enlisted, NCOs and junior Officers learn in all sorts of different ways and the training isn't directed towards those learning styles, so the training isn't as effective as it could be if training was tailored to individual soldiers' strengths. Do they still teach the OODA Loop? Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, by Col. John Boyd. Last edited by booker_t; July 29, 2009 at 09:39 AM. |
July 29, 2009, 10:18 AM | #5 | |
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I'm always struck, when I get into the back country, by the way my "filters" go down. Everything is potentially relevant if I'm canoeing somewhere remote, for example: the terrain, the sky, the sound of the river, and I'm pretty much open to all of it, so that I will notice the anomaly that might be a life-saver. Even more so out hunting, obviously, although I tend to be paying more attention to the "micro" level of things than to the "macro" stuff. But the thing about urban environments is that you have to spend so much energy filtering stuff that's irrelevant: advertising, traffic noise, general ugliness, not to mention all those people. And once you start "filtering" people -- that whole don't-make-eye-contact, don't-acknowledge-they-exist thing -- it gets harder to notice who's acting funny... I guess that's one reason so many folks, especially city ones, these days, have to be plugged into some electronic gadget all the time -- the iPod or whatever does the filtering for them. Environment? What environment? They're in their own little world...
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July 29, 2009, 11:42 AM | #6 | |
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Like most everything, I'd say there a solid mixture of environment and "wiring". Just like some people have a better sense than others of when someone is lying or even just not a "good person", even when there are no obvious "reasons". For example, there have been three people in my entire life, with whom I have spent a considerable amount of time, that give me that "something's not right" feeling. Two of the three have eventually confirmed my gut feeling and the jury's still out on number 3, but you can bet I'm careful.
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July 29, 2009, 02:18 PM | #7 | |
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Peetza, can you say more about that? What kind of "not right" were these folks? Was the gut feeling something you had right away about them? Do you have a sense of what cues you were picking up? I'm curious because one of the things I found most interesting in that article was the implication that a hunch, a gut feeling, was a reaction to cues that produced an emotional, sort of pre-cognitive response -- and that people differ in how fast they're able to notice that they're reacting emotionally to cues they haven't yet picked up at a conscious level. Which sounds sort of obvious when you say it, but it would be neat to have a factual, physiological understanding of something like "having a sixth sense for danger." And I bet that having a "sixth sense" for people or for situations might be two different abilities -- someone might have one or the other to a higher degree...
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July 29, 2009, 02:26 PM | #8 | |
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Yes, the feeling I had about all 3 of them was immediate but I have no idea why. It's like I can just look at them and KNOW that they are not what they are trying to look like they are, even though every body else seems to think that those same people are "OK". This is not to say that there haven't been people who were the same way that I DIDN'T have that feeling about but when I have had that feeling, I have not been wrong yet, with one still pending.
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July 29, 2009, 02:32 PM | #9 |
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Dogs...
... have traditionally been pretty good predictors of character, in my experience.
Some of them love everybody, and some don't like anybody, but the better ones tend to be amazingly good judges of character. For that matter, so do horses. I wonder how much a regular interaction with animals helps humans develop their own intuitions? |
July 29, 2009, 02:33 PM | #10 | |
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I find I am more aware when I am in the woods. I also think I am far more aware of surroundings than my non hunting friends. I have been practicing situational awareness since being on this board, but it is difficult with the everyday drone of life. Getting away and into the outdoors has to be a awareness heightener.
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July 29, 2009, 03:24 PM | #11 | |
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Practicing layups all day doesn't improve your jump shot. As a city guy who spends significant time in the country and around country people, being fully aware in crowded cities, surrounded by noise, is a thrill for me. Plug in your iPod and it is even harder, but having that iPod in just helps you blend even more. Every so often in DC, NYC, other cities, I'll notice other people who are just as aware of the overall scene as I am, among a crowd of people wearing virtual blinders. It's fascinating, because when you go to the country it's not always a complete reversal. Some people are alert, some are oblivious. People are people regardless of their environment, it just manifests differently. |
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July 29, 2009, 03:28 PM | #12 |
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sixth sense exists. Its called the danger sense, fear, self preservation, bad feelings, whatever else you want to call it. It is there to make sure you are ok. It is genetically put into you from your parents, and is also a learned behavior throughout your life.
Perfect example is someone who has been T-boned before. That person will look a few more times before they go because of that self preservation and experience. Likewise a person who just has a bad feeling and then something bad actually happens, that is a warning sign for the same reason. Depends on how you look at it |
July 29, 2009, 03:48 PM | #13 | |
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If you follow Grossman's line of reasoning, 98% of people are sheep, 1% are sheepdogs, and 1% are wolves. I'd say my experience would generally support those proportions. Lots of wolves are making it through the recruiting process these days; I helped two sociopaths out of the Marine Corps in one month last year. |
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July 29, 2009, 03:51 PM | #14 |
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Kyo, there is a difference between having a feeling and something being a sense.
Fear is a feeling you have, excited by various stimuli both internal and external. Fear can manifest itself in many ways, from typical fight or flight response, to a complete inability to act or think rationally. Having a "bad feeling" or taking extra precaution as a result of past experience is not a sense, it is merely a response to stimuli. That being said, the compound product of experience, your five senses, and fear, may result in feelings often referred to as gut instinct, a hunch, a sixth sense, or otherwise. This is not a sense in and of itself, however, it is a very valid (typically) human response that allows your brain to convey one simple message that has been distilled down from a plethora of experiences and feelings. That singular message (your gut) allows you to assess a situation, think clearly and act quickly and decisively without being bogged down by recalling and analyzing tons of memory data. |
July 29, 2009, 03:56 PM | #15 |
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What we are talking about is learning cues that you can pick up pre-attentively. Meaning you don't have to deliberately concentrate to detect the presence of whatever it is. It could be danger or the ability of an affineur to know when the Appenzeller is ripe.
With danger cues - you have a fast circuit that runs through the amygdala to activate emergency responses, before conscious apprehension. That's what we call your gut. Your real gut only contributes when it decides to poop in your pants. Items can reach this level of process by being genetically preprogrammed or thorough learning and reps. No special secret sense - just using what you got with training. This research comes out of the selective attention literature which was always related to practical applications, esp. in emergency and military situations. Three cheers for cognitive psychology!
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July 29, 2009, 03:57 PM | #16 | ||
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One question this raises for me is what role sense of smell might play in some of this, especially as it relates to people? We say casually, "Something doesn't smell right," and I wonder if it can literally be true with people. If so, it's another cue we'd be likely to notice at a less-than-conscious level, I think. And I wonder if it's trainable, and how you'd do that... Quote:
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July 29, 2009, 03:59 PM | #17 |
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While training smell isn't my thing - the level of processing is also called: automaticity. How you get there is by training and reps and training and reps. Also mental imaging of the responses helps when you aren't actually do it.
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July 29, 2009, 04:18 PM | #18 |
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And as long as we're getting into the neural underpinnings of cognition, or whatever it is we're talking about, there's also research showing that what we think of as "the present moment" is actually integrated, by our brains, over about three seconds' worth of sensory inputs -- which goes another little way toward explaining how we're able (on a good day, perhaps, and with training ) to react to things "before we're aware of them."
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July 29, 2009, 04:22 PM | #19 |
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I agree with KYO
You do have a 6th sense. My grandmother always told me pay attention to it. All of us have been in situations or places that just didn't feel right. That's because there was something that was not right.
I'm not sure how it applies to this discussion in regards to survival but some of us also have another innate skill. I'm constantly spotting wildlife while driving ... groundhogs, rabbits, deer, etc. It blows my mind. I have stopped the car so I can point them out.
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July 29, 2009, 04:51 PM | #20 |
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I'm constantly spotting wildlife too... hookers, drug dealers, gangbangers and vagrants.
But, unlike you, I'm not stopping the car. |
July 30, 2009, 09:57 AM | #21 |
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Vanya - there's a large training literature on how to give people these abilities. You are correct - they clearly point out that realistic training gives people automatic schema for emergencies. They find it in fire training, piloting, military, etc.
It's not mystical or ESP or the Force - just cog. sci. !! No sixth sense based on the unknown - just trained use of what we have. For example, it was figured out how outfielders catch baseballs hit to them. Is that mystical?
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July 30, 2009, 10:52 AM | #22 | ||
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It's common -- for example, in "what did I do wrong?" threads in this forum -- for people to point out that if the person had been paying attention, he/she could have avoided the situation entirely. So what goes into "paying attention?" How do you get better at it? My reason for starting this thread was to get some discussion going that might be useful to others who are less well versed in this stuff, and get people thinking about the non-mystical (cognitive, emotional, physiological, what-have-you) factors that go into what we loosely call situational awareness.
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July 30, 2009, 11:10 AM | #23 |
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Vanya, I wasn't talking about you - sorry if I was misunderstood. In fact, I thought I was supporting your cogent posts and commenting on others.
Now, I'm sad - - going to lift weights now. Apologies. Glenn
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July 30, 2009, 11:16 AM | #24 | |
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Aw, shucks, Glenn... it was that
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Sorry 'bout that. Good lifting.
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July 30, 2009, 01:44 PM | #25 |
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I have to take issue with the sheep analogy again. You find all sorts of animals out there. Goats, mules, kittens, bulls, and so on. (What kind of animal are you?) And did you ever notice that sheep dogs either look like sheep or like wolves?
When I went places with my father he was always noticing animals along the road and I rarely saw them. Now that I do the driving, I see animals. It's simply that the driver is on the lookout. It also helps a lot if there are actually animals out there and there are many more where I live than where he lived. And it helps to know where to look sometimes.
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