From: Kalkor (kalkor@kalkor.com)
Date: Mon Nov 10 2003 - 10:24:59 MST
[Blunderov]
<snip>
That said; I do believe the brain responds to positive instruction
better than they do to negative prohibition.
I have an example to back this up which may interest Dr. Sebby. A golfer
standing on a teeing area in front of which is a water hazard may easily
sabotage himself by giving himself the instruction NOT to hit the ball
into the water. This makes an image in his mind of the result that he
least wishes! The subconscious then proceeds to do everything within its
power to actualize the picture that it has been given to work with.
Far better for the golfer to give himself the instruction to hit the
ball OVER the water and to form that image in his mind instead.
Best Regards
[Metahuman]
That's called confidence, B.
[Kalkor]
From
http://www.wordsmyth.net/live/home.php?script=search&matchent=confidence&mat
chtype=exact
1. a sense of assurance, faith, or trust in a person or thing, or in
oneself.
2. a secret.
3. reliance on another to keep a secret.
Visualizing a successful outcome (or a failure) does not fit into the
category of "confidence", imho. The golfer in question can have all the
confidence in the world, conciously, yet visualizing that ball plonking into
the water can make that outcome happen.
This sort of exercise actually fits into the category of imagery if I'm not
mistaken, which is entirely separate from confidence. The biggest difference
I can see just off-hand is that mental rehearsal appears to improve
performance even in the absence of confidence. In fact, one of the suggested
uses of performance imagery is to improve confidence.
For some excellent information about mental rehearsal in the context of
sports performance, see
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/coachsci/csa/vol26/table.htm
There was a recent study done by some cats at Cornell on the relationship
between confidence and competence. Their findings were that those who are
least competent at a task were also those who are most confident. However,
all studies I've seen on positive visualization rehearsal resulted in
improved performance. In other words, being confident in your abilities
doesn't necessarily result in improved performance, whereas visualization
does.
For most motor actions, concious signals from the cerebral cortex
(pyramidal) are modified by unconcious signals from everywhere else in the
brain (extrapyramidal) to generate coordinated movement. These
extrapyramidal signals can come from the cerebellum (proprioception) and
limbic system (emotion) for example. When you reach for a glass of water,
you're conciously willing your arm to reach out and your hand to grasp. But
you're not conciously controlling all the minute muscular contractions and
relaxations that result in your balance changing, your depth perception, the
precise motor control required to hold the glass without crushing or
dropping it.
In the example of sports performance, visualization seems to give your
extrapyramidal modifiers something to work with. "When I perform this task,
my body should look like *this*." Or, "When I hit the ball, it should go
*plonk* into the water."
The consistent results achieved through visualization exercises can be used
to *correctly* build confidence. If you feel like you can't do it, but then
you visualize doing it correctly and as a result do it correctly, this tends
to improve your confidence in your abilities through demonstration.
And hey, at least I didn't digress into the topic of confidence vs efficacy.
Anyone wanna tackle that beauty?
Kalkor
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