Overthinking Can Decrease Performance

One of the most challenging tasks a student pilot can face is landing the airplane. Or, perhaps I should say safely landing the airplane, as in no damage to either the pilot or his machine!

It’s an interesting process. We practice landing from our very first lesson with an instructor by our side. Of course the instructor initially shows us what to do while they are telling us what they do, and of course we pay very close attention to every detail. Then we assume more of the controls, and even though we saw what to do and were told what to do, it seems for most of us that we still don’t do it. Until we do, of course. http://customizedfatloss.isourchurch.com/form-of-transmission.html
There seems to be this void between the knowing what to do and the doing it. I remember quite clearly that I just couldn’t get it right at first, and I couldn’t figure out why. My instructor wisely told me, although it didn’t make sense at the time, that with practice, eventually I would be able to do it. And he was right! Something happened; even now I don’t know what exactly happened, but I went from not being able to land a plane to being able to. Everything just came together when I relaxed and rather than thinking about every little thing I needed to do to land an airplane, I just did it!

A recent study called “Disruption of Dorsolateral But Not Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex Improves Unconscious Perceptual Memories” was just published in the Journal of Neuroscience and suggests that overthinking can actually be detrimental to human performance. It may explain why I was able to land the plane when I stopped thinking so much and got out of my own way!

It seems that under certain circumstances, paying full attention and trying too hard can actually impede performance, according to the study by lead author Taraz Lee, a postdoctoral scholar at UC Santa Barbara. This is because we need to access our working memories to be able to perform. Like the jokes about people, scientists presently feel that there are two kinds of long-term memory: implicit, which does not require conscious thought and is expressed by means other than words, and explicit, which is formed consciously and can be described in words. Scientists consider these two distinct areas of function both behaviorally and in the brain. http://fatloss.photographist.me/care-for-infected-children.html
Long-term memory is stored in various regions in the prefrontal cortex, which is the newest part of the brain evolutionarily and the part of the brain responsible for planning, executive function, and working memory. “A lot of people think the reason we’re human is because we have the most advanced prefrontal cortex,” said Lee.

Two previous brain studies have shown that disrupting the second type, explicit memory resources, improved our implicit memory without our being conscious of this.

These results suggested that improved implicit perceptual memory can aid performance on recognition tests. So Lee and his colleagues decided to test whether the effects of our consciously paying attention, which is associated with explicit memory, could directly interfere with our expression of the subconscious implicit memory.

The study used a series of kaleidoscopic images and the subjects were given memory tests while using continuous theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to temporarily disrupt the function of the prefrontal cortex.

“After they gave us that answer, we asked whether they remembered a lot of rich details, whether they had a vague impression, or whether they were blindly guessing,” explains Lee. “And the participants only did better when they said they were guessing.”

The results indicated that paying strict conscious attention can be a distraction and affect performance outcomes. “If we ramped down activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, people remembered the images better,” said Lee.

Lee intends to continue his studies in this area, focusing on why highly motivated athletes choke under pressure, among other things.

“I think most researchers who look at prefrontal cortex function are trying to figure out what it does to help you and how that explains how the brain works and how we act,” said Lee. “I look at it at the opposite. If we can figure out the ways in which activity in this part of the brain hurts you, then this also informs how your brain works and can give us some clues to what’s actually going on.” http://sixpacksabs.thenerd.me/care-for-infected-children.html
And if you think this is not significant to real life, think about the last time you flew in an airplane. Then you will realize that, although the second greatest thrill a person can have may be flying, there is no doubt that the greatest thrill a person can have is a good LANDING!