The document discusses how failure and stress affect learning and memory formation in the brain. It explains that stress does not aid learning if it occurs more than 45 minutes before an event and that the impairing effects of stress can last longer than previously thought. Stress can impair memory retrieval and make memories easier to alter. Under continued stress, higher cognitive functions do not recover fully and decision-making shifts from goal-directed to habit-based systems with higher risk-taking. The document suggests training methods could benefit from balancing positive and negative feedback in shorter bursts to better regulate stress levels.
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11 RUSI LWC 2017 Session Eight: Gareth Bloomfield, Psychologist , Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
1. TRAINING ON THE EDGE OF
FAILURE
“A psychological view of the fear of failure
and benefiting from failure.”
Gareth Bloomfield, Psychologist, RMAS
Dept. Communication & Applied Behavioural Science
5. A = Amygdala – memory, decision-making, emotional reactions
L = Locus Coeruleus – Promotes physiological responses
H = Hypothalamus Metabolic ANS Promotes secretion of neuro-hormones
PFC = Pre-Frontal Cortex – Thinking, ahead, planning, judging, risk assessment
P = Pituitary Gland – Hormone secretion
A
L
PFC
P
H
APartofTheSalienceNetwork
7. Stress at The Time Of Learning Enhances Memory
I will never
put myself
in this
situation
again.
8.
9. Danger – the stress of failure
1. Stress does not aid learning 45 mins or more before the event.
2. Impairing effects of stress can last much longer than previously
thought.
3. Memory retrieval can be impaired and results in easier to alter
memories.
4. Higher cognitive functions do not recover if the stress continues
leading to habit based decisions and higher risk taking.
5. A shift toward habit-based from goal-directed systems under stress.
10.
11. The future… maybe
• A slower-pace, less repetition, more tricks to stimulate
creative thinking.
• Gender Command Choices.
• Regulating stress levels in trainees with more
considered balance of positive outcome feedback with
negative outcome feedback in short bursts.
Editor's Notes
A neuro-psychological view.
A brief trip through our brains to show the effect of training to failure, the stress created by the fear of it, and resulting learning and decision making.
The potential benefit, and of course the potential dangers.
My principle message will be seeking a balance between positive and negative outcomes and even some insights into gender.
Training in a military context is ‘Feedback-driven learning’
Representations of what success looks like and what failure looks like are continually promoted in training.
Consider what failure actually is in a military training environment.
Not achieving the objective – a loss – human or tactical. An actual or perceived ‘loss of control’ that the team or individual were seeking to have.
Perceptions of Control can be disrupted by physiological homeostatic disruptions like heat, cold and pain, or psychological or psychosocial.
As the team or individual perceive that they are gaining more control over the situation the stress falls back
Beginning to lose control, increases stress.
Prior to the advent of fMRI, the primary means of examining the mechanisms underlying learning were restricted to studying human behaviour and non-human neural systems, (live brain experiments on other mammals). Now we know a great deal more since we can see inside our own brains.
5 key areas of the brain that we need to know about that influence learning during failure, decision making and our ability to filter salient information.
As the perception of loss of control increases, an expectation and fear of failure becomes prominent.
The autonomic nervous system (left) is activated within seconds to release noradrenaline from the locus coeruleus in the brain stem and adrenal medulla promoting the greater likelihood of a ‘freeze - fight-or-flight’ response and increasing heart rate and blood flow to muscles. But it also has a profound effects on attention, working memory and long-term memory
Somewhat slower, the hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis is activated, releasing hormones which stimulate the pituitary gland and the adrenal cortex to produce cortisol and release it into the blood stream. Cortisol reaches peak level concentrations ~20–30 min after the onset of the stress of failure but enters the brain quickly to affect cognition and behaviour.
These effects can influence brain function in Decision Making, those critical regions of prefrontal cortex and amygdala. Not only through cortisol but also hormones linked to the optimization of explicit memory retrieval.
Emotionally arousing events are typically very well-remembered. Likewise, individuals who experienced extremely stressful (traumatic) events may suffer from very vivid memories of these events, suggesting that severe stress during or just before encoding may boost memory formation.
Material that is seemingly unrelated to an ongoing stressor but none the less may be important, is typically not very well-remembered later on.
Police statements that have many significant detail differences between witnesses reflect this.
Training involving intense uncontrollability and ultimate failure, tends to yield greater cortisol levels. Which provides us with the benefit of a stronger memory of it. The fact they are moderately stressed can enhance memory formation for emotional material and information that is related to the stressful context, i.e. what caused the failure. This higher sensitivity to signals of failure during the early feedback learning, mean the consequences are more impactful.
There is also greater risk taking immediately after stress which may help us actually avoid failure but throwing all we have and putting ourselves in danger potentially for a greater good. Of course individual differences in subjective appraisals of ‘control’ and the level of stressors are contributing factors.
In the harsh reality of combat and front line support, it also leads to a stress-related shift toward ‘habit-based Decision Making’. Following perhaps predictable operational procedure. We drop into auto-pilot of what has worked in the past; what we have been taught; which again we can argue is what we want our soldiers to do.
But in reality decisions involving risk-taking rely in part on stress-susceptible valuation & learning processes.
Decision-makers need to be in a mind set where they can assess uncertainty, predictability, potential gains and losses, outcome magnitude and other factors.
Fear of failure and resulting stress is likely to impair the encoding of stressor-unrelated material which may be vitally important.
Stress leading up to learning (45 mins or more) or in a distinctly different context does not promote new learning and can even hinder successful encoding of new information. More than 1hr before impairs the formation of new memories.
Impairing effects of stress can last much longer than previously thought. Memory retrieval can be impaired and the acquisition of information encoded long after the stressful event. When recalling a stressful memory it becomes easy to alter, labile, stress can affect the memory reformation.
Memory updating under stress, more rigid stimulus–response associations are learned rather than complex representations of our environment including the relationship between stimuli or task requirements. That’s not what we want from leaders.
Reversal of heightened salience network activity as a result of the fear of failure, which is important for higher cognitive control functions to improve in the aftermath of stress, does not occur when people remain in the stressful context.
This creates a propensity to shift toward habit-based from goal-directed systems under stress, potentially associated with facilitation of reward-based reinforcement-learning — but also an insensitivity to updated environmental contingencies that can be maladaptive in some contexts
prosocial behaviour is influenced by stress exposure (with increases in self-interested decisions during social exchange games against strangers but generosity toward close others when decisions and stress exposure were close in time).
A slower-pace, less repetition, and varied expected values may promote a more deliberative strategy and enhanced salience of potential losses.
Multiple studies have reported reduced risk-taking in stressed females but increases in males. Females may be more ‘ambiguity averse’ in some Decision Making contexts.
Acute stress reduces sensitivity to rewards learning is operationalized as improved choice after repeated positive/negative feedback, and was impaired for decisions based on negative outcome feedback but enhanced for positive (i.e., rewarding) feedback; Our brains have a better response to signals of success in feedback learning, post the stress of failure.
