Beauty of uncertainty

based on a study showing what happens when we discount the surprise value of unexpected events ~> [link]

Anti anxiety

“With the ideal comes the actual
like two arrows in mid-air ..they meet” ~ Sandokai

What does this have to say about stress and anxiety ..? The odds of events meeting our ideals are about as likely as two arrows meeting in mid-air. At the local-level, what we think people should do or say is an ideal ..what follows is the actual. Like arrows in mid-air, they seldom meet. At the neural-level, when events don’t meet our expectations, an orienting response is triggered. Pupils dilate ..light intensifies ..sounds get amp’d ..muscle tone increases ..acetylcholine is released .. blood vessels constrict and blood pressure rises ..all in a fraction of an instance. The orienting response is meant to be transitory. It should subside once dissimilarities are found to be non-threatening. But when the incidence of dissimilarity occurs too often, and the orienting response doesn’t get a chance to recover ..it becomes chronic. You experience a constant sense of vigilance both mentally and viscerally, which is similar to what someone with PTSD suffers. It takes a toll. There are many reasons for experiencing a higher incidence of dissimilarity. I have a theory that highlights one possibility: memory becomes scripted with age and repetition. Many of our old views of the world simply don’t match present-day reality anymore. However, we persist. This leads to a false sense of knowing and anticipating what comes next. However, what comes next is never certain ..only imagined. Anticipation-fueled imagination is a vicious cycle that leads to more frequent experiences of dissimilarity between the imagined and the actual. I believe this results in chronic anxiety and a pervasive feeling of dissatisfaction.

Receptivity theory

Dr Roger Schank

I have a theory. People who rate themselves as highly ‘consistent and uncompromising’ on issues are slower to adapt to change and less likely to learn from their mistakes. To put it bluntly, “I think inflexibility leads to arrested development”. Roger Schank has a model of speech comprehension that says sometimes people only tune-in long enough to retrieve the most likely script from memory [link]. After that, communication becomes a process of listening for information to fill-in the missing pieces. Tom Trabasso says script-based processing is a useful strategy but only when matters are highly predictable ..like listening to a kidnapping story where you can safely narrow your attention to the parts that talk about “what kind of force was used” or “what the kidnapper’s demands are.” My theory says that over-reliance on script-based processing is sort of like Procrustes bed in Greek mythology .. reception becomes limited to what conforms to a standard set of precedents in the listeners head. The rest is quickly dismissed as either immaterial, inconceivable or unacceptable (take for example John Boehner’s “Hell, no!” anti-Obama strategy, or Senator Russell Pearce’s claim that all opposing views are “treasonous”). I talked to Dr Thompson about it. Although he generally considers theories a dime a dozen, he thinks it merits attention and even suggested some ‘assessment tools’ I could use to measure ‘willingness to yield’ on issues. I didn’t think it would be hard getting people to admit to having an uncompromising nature and I have tests that measure how swiftly people handle unexpected events in a narrative. Now I’m interested in getting started and seeing what turns-up. Perhaps it’s already been done. I mean, you’d think it’d be a factor in Alzheimer’s or something. Considering the political atmosphere around here there’s bound to be some interest in the subject.

Reception

In 1998, psychologist Arthur Graesser examined components of speech and reading comprehension in ‘real-time’ [link]. Components of comprehension include things like ‘unexpected event-handling’ and ‘outcome-resolution’. They are measured in milliseconds. Using an interactive computer-presentation, he recorded the time students spent at each step. Sort of like a reaction-time study. What he found was counter-intuitive. Comprehension scores were actually higher for students who took longer to process unexpected events in a narrative. Students who spent less time had lower scores. On closer examination, he found they were interpreting events way too quickly. Consequently, they were missing the bridge to ‘explanatory’ events presented elsewhere in the narrative. What this tells me is that receptivity is more important than reaching conclusions while listening to someone speak.