I dont own a training company, so Im not looking for business. What is of interest to me is that if someone is going to spend good money on training course they need to make sure that the course stands up to science, many, many training compaines have been selling programs that use out dated science as a sell point or worse misapplied science. Much information has come to light over the last few years with the leaps that have been made in science. A few myths that I really feel need to be put to rest include; Hicks law, heart beat vs Motor control function, learning reps, the flinch or startle response. Hyper vigilence in all its forms.

I was going to start my own blog to post this info and may do so at the end of the day but until thenI feel that with people spending hard earned money they should at least be educated enough to make informed decisions when it comes to buying training.

Im going to start with Hicks law, so if your interested check back later tonight!

I'm listening......

Of course, I've always believed that the threat without a heartbeat, experiences an immediate loss in motor control...

I hope you're going to publish your sources, I'm always ready to learn.

And yes, I do own a training company.

Sources will be published, otherwise its just the ramblings of a mad man!!

And remember, keep your answers simple and stupid.....so we can all follow along.....

Welcome to the forum RSG. This is a growing forum with a very diverse group of individuals. Please take the time to introduce yourself in the :introduction section of the site. As someone who is involved in training "security" folks, I'm personally interested in reading your upcoming posts. Again, welcome to the forum.

Sunil Ram

Its a bit wordy but here it is, incuding the source papers as requested by the man with the glock and the spot deduction that a man with no heart beat experiences loss of motor control...and id imagine bladder control too



In a nut shell Hicks law is purported to be a law of motor function, often quoted with almost religious enthusiasm. Hicks law basically states that the more choices you have to make (in any given environment) the slower you will be due to mental processing time. Modern day trainers using off the shelf systems often quote Hicks law as …. Well a law. These same systems and trainers have been for years telling us to keep it simple, nothing wrong with that as long as it’s not to simple or we dumb down the training until its just ineffective.

The actual Hick's idea was based on a computer study, a paper written in 1952 and simply set up an equation that states it takes time to decide between options. Just for the record, the equation is TR+a+b{Log2 (N)}. A computer performance study? Do you think that 1950 computers ran a bit slow? The 1950 idea was then extrapolated into human performance, based on very primitive, 1950 push-button tests. The lab method had the testee selecting from several buttons on sudden command. From this, the mythology of the slow decision-making brain developed.
Exponentially decision making? Any exponential function is a constant multiple of its own derivative. Many modern tactical instructors still just blindly associate a never-ending doubling ratio to Hick - that is, for every two choices, selection time doubles per added choice. Yet, despite all these quotes on times, Hick made no official proclamation on the milliseconds it takes to decide between options.
There is a general, consensus in the modern Kinesiology community that Simple Reaction Time, called SRT, takes an average of 150 milliseconds to decide to take an action. That's considerably less than a quarter of a second-or 250 milliseconds, or half-a-second, or "about a second." Lets re-establish that there are 1,000 milliseconds in one second-a fact that makes all these time studies fall to include into a proper perspective. 1,000 of them! More than 1,000 milliseconds passed before you can read the number aloud.
Based on the doubling/exponentially rule with the commonly discussed SRT average, then choosing between two choices must take 300 milliseconds. Run out that time-table. Three choices? 600 milliseconds. Four choices? 1 second and 200 milliseconds. A mere five choices? 2 seconds and 400 milliseconds! Six? 4 full seconds and 800 milliseconds. Should a boxer learn 5 tactics? That would mean 9 seconds and 600 milliseconds to choose one tactic from another? You would really see people physically shut down while trying to select options at this point and beyond. Has this been your viewing experience of a football game? Basketball? Tennis? Has this been your experience as a witness to life? Under this casual, exponential increase rule, it would seem athletes would stand dumbfounded, as index cards rolled through their heads in an attempt to pick a choice of action. Every eye jab could not be blocked if the blocker was taught even just two blocks. The eye attack would hit the eyes as the defender sluggishly selects between the two blocks.
One then begins to wonder how a football game can be played, how a jazz pianist functions, or how a bicyclist can pedal himself in a New York City rush hour. How does a boxer, who sees a spilt-second opening, select a jab, cross, hook, uppercut, overhand, or to step back straight, right or left? If he dares to throw combination punches how can he select them so quickly?
Simple, modern athletic performance studies attack the doubling rule, but we need not only look to athletes. How can a typist type so quickly? Look at all the selections on a computer? 26 letters-plus options! How can you read this typed essay? How can your mind select and process from 26 different letters in the alphabet? It is obvious that the exponential rule of “doubling” with each option, has serious scientific problems when you run a simple math table out, or just look about you at everyday life.
New tests upon new tests on skills like driving vehicles, flying, sports and psychology, have created so many layers of fresh information. Larish and Stelmach in 1982 established that one could select from 20 complex options in 340 milliseconds, providing the complex choices have been previously trained. One other study even had a reaction time of .03 milliseconds between two trained choices! .03! Merkel's Law, for example, says that trouble begins when a person has to select between 8 choices, but can still select a choice from the eight well under 500 milliseconds. Brace yourself! Mowbray and Rhoades Law of 1959, or the Welford Law of 1986, found no difference in reaction time at all, when selecting from numerous, well-trained choices.
Why all these time differences? It is crystal clear that training makes a considerable difference. Plus-people, tests and testing equipment are different. Respondents state that every person and the skills they perform in tests vary, so reaction times vary. One universal difficulty mentioned by researchers is the mechanical task of splitting the second in their testing - that is identifying the exact millisecond that the tested reaction took place. Many recorded tests are performed by under-grads in less than favorable conditions.
The test-givers themselves have reaction time issues that effect time recording! Milliseconds are wasted as the tester sees the testee react, then reacts with a stopwatch device, either estimating or losing milliseconds in their own reaction process. Common test machinery takes milliseconds to register a choice. Results can get vague and slippery within the tiny world of a single second. Documenting milliseconds in the 1950s was almost impossible even in the most sophisticated labs, yet modern instructors ignore modern research and use the 1950s numbers to base their training methodologies. But test-gathering technology is rapidly changing.

Discoveries made in 1990s, decades after the 1950s Hicks law began, blowing the original, antiquated "mental rolodex/task selection" concept out of the water. The brain has a fast track! Below, researchers Martin D. Topper, Ph.D., and Jack M. Feldman, Ph.D. write about them:
"Currently, the best explanation is provided by psychologist Gary Klein in Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. He's proposed that the human brain is capable of multi-tasking. Gary's theory works like this: A visual image is picked up by the retina and is transmitted to the visual center of the brain in the occipital lobe. From there the image is sent to two locations in the brain. On the one hand, it goes to the higher levels of the cerebral cortex which is the seat of full conscious awareness. There, in the frontal lobes, the image is available to be recognized, analyzed, input into a decision process and acted upon as the person considers appropriate. Let's call this "the slow track," because full recognition of the meaning of a visual image, analyzing what it represents, deciding what to do and then doing it takes time. Some psychologists also refer to this mental process as System II cognition. If you used System II cognition in critical situations like a skid, you wouldn't have enough time to finish processing the OODA Loop before your car went over the cliff.

Fortunately, there's a second track, which we'll call "the fast track," or System I Cognition. In this system, the image is also sent to a lower, pre-conscious region of the brain, which is the amygdala. This area of the brain stores visual memory and performs other mental operations as well. The visual image is compared here on a pre-conscious level at incredible speed with many thousands of images that are stored in memory. Let's call each image a "frame" which is a term that Dr. Erving Goffman used in his book Frame Analysis to describe specific, cognitively-bounded sets of environmental conditions. I like to use the word "frame" here because the memory probably contains more than just visual information. There may be sound, kinesthetic, tactile, olfactory or other sensory information that also helps complement the visual image contained within the frame - fortunately, the fast and slow tracks are usually complimentary, one focusing on insight, the other on action. Together they produce a synergistic effect that enhances the actor's chances of survival.

But even though these two tracks are complimentary, we know that some people seem to be much more skilled than others at integrating System 1 and System 2. These especially competent individuals seem to resolve critical situations and also adapt to rapid changes in those situations. They invent routines they have never before performed and act in a fluid, seamless manner without employing full focal awareness."

So at this point in our understanding, we have newer models discovered and developing that tell us something about how the brain can operate on two tracks at the same time, but we don't really have a good idea of how the two levels interact, except to say that the interaction is very fast and complex, and some people do it better than others. We really don't know everything we'd like to know. But we do know that specific types of training can help a person develop unconscious competence, and this is enough to make some suggestions about the kind of training that will help make relatively unskilled people more competent in finding solutions to potentially violent encounters.
And then this news on BDNF: Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor :
"If I had to make a signal that could write messages on the brain from the environment, that would be BDNF."
Scientists at Johns Hopkins and the National Cancer Institute have found a "missing link" brain chemical that rises and falls quickly in response to stress, fear or an upbeat mood, and then sculpts nerve circuits in the brain accordingly. Their report, on work done appears in the Dec. 21, 1999 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Further, because research at Hopkins and elsewhere shows that BDNF levels vary with subject's experience as it goes down in stressful situations..."BDNF has all the right features to be the critical signal by which environmental and psychosocial interactions impact on the brain," says neuropathologist Dr. Vassilis E. Koliatsos. "It's very rapid, it's sensitive, and it affects a system critical for emotional life and behavior. "What we believe we've found is a link between what happens to a person on a daily basis and the way the brain responds, from an emotional standpoint, over the long term."

Dr Susan Greenfield has written The Quest For Identity In The 21st Century, in which she discusses the natural ways the human brain grows and adapts. " I'm a neuroscientist and my day-to-day research at Oxford University strives for an ever greater understanding - and therefore maybe, one day, a cure - for Alzheimer's disease. But one vital fact I have learnt is that the brain is not the unchanging organ that we once imagined. It not only goes on developing, changing and, in some tragic cases, eventually deteriorating with age, it is also substantially shaped by what we do to it and by the experience of daily life. When I say "shaped," I'm not talking figuratively or metaphorically; I'm talking literally. At a microcellular level, the infinitely complex network of nerve cells that make up the constituent parts of the brain actually change in response to certain experiences and stimuli. The brain, in other words, is malleable. The surrounding environment has a huge impact both on the way our brains develop and how that brain is transformed into a unique human mind.
Doctors Richard A. Schmidt (a decades long expert) and Timothy Donald Lee, in the , ground breaking, 1980s book and subsequent new editions since, Motor Control and Learning reported that task selection is made up of two parts, RT (reaction time) - seeing the problem, and MT (movement time) - physically moving to respond, and thus may be a "few milliseconds " for fast, simple chores, not this compounding, exponential, doubling, half-second format.

Eight decades of performance testing and technology have passed since Hicks simple, little "Computer Choice Law", with new technology and testing on athletes as well as regular, everyday people. Not only are the testing methods better, and the understanding superior, so are the new methodologies created to increase SRT and selection times. Perhaps no better better statement damning the Hicks law model can be found than from neuroplastician Dr. Michael Merzenich, regarded among experts as a leading source on the human brain when reporting in the book, The Brain that Changes Itself, "we can change the very structure of the brain and increase its capacity...unlike a computer, the brain is constantly adapting itself." You will recall that Hicks Law concept first originated from a computer.
How can we change and improve? With training like:
* Sequential Learning - the stringing of tasks working together like connected notes in music, really reduces reaction and selection time.
* Conceptual Learning - is another speed track. In relation to survival training, this means a person first makes an either/or conceptual decision, like “Shoot/Don't shoot,” or, “Move-In/Move Back.” Rather than selecting from a series of hand strikes, in Conceptual Learning, the boxer does not waste milliseconds selecting specific punches, but rather makes one overall decision, “punch many times!” The trained body then takes over,
Dr. M. Blackspear of the Brain Dynamics Center at the University of Sydney Australia reports that the: "...study of functional inter-dependences between brain regions is a rapidly growing focus of neuroscience research. This endeavor has been greatly facilitated by the appearance of a number of innovative methodologies for the examination of neurophysiological and neuroimaging data." This Blackspear statement was made about the amazing new discoveries in 2005 and of how fast, repeat HOW FAST the healthy, human brain changes and adapts "on the fly" (which is the medical, catch phrase for such studies on this now). People select and change options "mid-flight" in milliseconds split into milliseconds.
6 Choices? 400 milliseconds to choose or a full 3 or 4 seconds to rolodex through all of them? Let's go back to the ol' ball game - and back to the baseball analogy that started this article. We expect a common shortstop in baseball to perform a select list of actions
Catch a ground ball to his left
To his center
Straight at him
Catch a pop up or a line drive
Moves all to be executed in the sheer "splitest" of split seconds? Then, our ape man ball player has even more split-second, follow-up decisions to make with runner's on different bases. Even a child playing shortstop has a lot to decide and fast, AND can do it faster than 4 seconds

Your entire dissertation is a direct quote from an article written by W. Hock Hochheim as posted on his Martial Arts blog. Here's the link:

http://www.hockscqc.com/articles/hickslaw.htm

Personally, I was hoping for something more than a cut and paste job.

Thats right it is, what more are you looking for? its research that was put together by him and others

The point of research is to build on what others have done, the point of posting that was to point was to show what has been done in terms of debunking common training myths as they apply to training. I have researched high and low and found that his work is pretty well on target. Not trying to reinvent the wheel here. Hence the name research guy, not science guy

Originally Posted by Research guy

Thats right it is, what more are you looking for? its research that was put together by him and others

I think my point was that you should quote your sources. I also believe that is what Glock was alluding to as well.

Any good researcher will include the source of their information, lest someone think that it is their own, original, intellectual property. Don't take this as a shot at you personally - but many of the instructors on this forum - and there are a very large number of them - wouldn't dream of posting or publishing material that doesn't include its source or specify whether it is an original work.

Research is good. Your point in your original post is right on when you say to the effect that you should know what you are paying for. However, in deciding if material is relevant or credible, the source of the material is weighed heavily in that equation. The source frequently sheds light on the context in which the work was originally written. For example, does the writer of the work have an agenda that he wants to further, or is the writer a recognized subject matter expert in his field of study.

Posting material without sources is generally know as plagerism. To avoid that problem, just post your source. Keep researching - the quest for knowledge is an admirable one. Many times when I find an article of interest, I post my summary of the article and then include the hyperlink (if it's on the web) or the name of the publication that the article can be found in.