I'm wondering about the role that Relevance may or may not play in how humans react to fear. Since we are considering that Relevance should predict that human cognition will be most sensitive to the stimulus that is considered optimally relevant within a limited time, I'm curious what this claim would say about a person facing a 'fight or flight' situation.
I know from situations in my own life that when I'm experiencing something scary (e.g. falling off a ladder), I have a difficult time selecting a stimulus to focus on--to improve my situation. Likewise, if, let's say, I'm confronted with a grizzly bear in the woods, I would imagine that the bear would be the most relevant stimulus in my life at that moment.
I can imagine that instead of attending to the most relevant stimulus at the moment (the bear and perhaps how to appease him), a person might block out the sensations and perhaps faint. Alternatively, a person might attend to a more comforting but less relevant stimulus in their periphery (e.g. a bird on a tree) simply to distract him/herself from the fearful situation. I admit that this situation is highly hypothetical, but it seems realistic enough that Relevance should have to explain the selective attention involved.
Posted by steve125 at October 20, 2004 9:28 AMI think this is really interesting. For the ladder case, it seems like it happens so fast that conscious thought really doesn't have any impact - any actions that you take are controlled by "f-mind," like putting your hands out to prevent landing on your head. So to frame this with Relevance theory one might say that there is no stimulus which, given the time available for processing, is above threshold (whatever that means).
I think the bear example is trickier for relevance theory because it doesn't have the easy "processing time" out. It works all right for the case where you try to appease the bear, but what about fainting? Is this a case of competing parts of your brain? The cognitive center, which tries to optimize relevance, runs up against the more autonomic parts, which overload on some chemicals and pass you out. Or, maybe passing out is natural selection's way of saying, "It's not really going to be a good fight, might as well allow the 'fittest' to save a little energy."
Finally, in the ladder case, there is a sort of "top-down" influence possible, if you think before you go up the ladder what you will do if you happen to fall (like "try not to land on the begonias"). Just out of curiousity, do many people do this sort of "top-down" thing as much as I do? It's almost like getting canned responses ready for as many events as possible, so that when the time comes, I can just coast through if I need to.
Posted by: Tim at October 20, 2004 7:26 PMSorry I don't know enough about what you're studying to use relevant terminology. From my own experience, I would say the reason we're not conscious of the ladder fall is because there isn't enough time for the conscious part of the brain to react. If we assume that the unconscious is faster, although likely not able to reason logically, it follows that natural selection would favor those individuals whose subconscious took over when the conscious brain was too slow. If some structure in the brain supplies mental resources to, or facilitates the function of, both the subconscious and conscious (or memory) areas of the brain, then conservation of resources may also play a roll in why we don’t remember these events. There may simply not be enough “juice” to make everything work at the same time in an emergency.
I wonder if we don't "think" anything in the bear situation because the adrenaline released for fight of flight reactions shuts down conscious thought in favor of a quicker and more efficient method. After all, you’re not going to have time to ponder your options when a bear is bearing down on you (haha, I made a funny!).
FYI, the three times I recall being in such a situation were: 1. Running over my dog on a bike. My only memory of the event is a grayed-out freeze frame of me headed over the handlebars with an orange and white blur below. My memory of this event was surely affected by the consequent concussion. 2. Tripping over the edge of the ball pit at a Hardee’s. One moment I was about to jump in, and the next I was face down in the balls. I didn’t even experience the passage of time as I fell; it was like I had been instantaneously transported from the edge to the balls. It was one of the strangest sensations I’ve ever experienced. 3. Hitting that damnable tree on that damnable sled! I was conscious of everything as it happened, but don’t recall consciously thinking anything until I had stopped spinning around.
I've actually had a version of both of these situations (encountering a bear in the woods, and having a ladder collapse under me). My experience is pretty close to what Tim suggested.
When the ladder collapsed under me, I grabbed onto the roof of the building while the ladder dropped away. I had no time to think, and like Cogitus Creo (who are you?) I don't even remember grabbing the building because it all happened so fast. All of a sudden I was just hanging there from the building.
When I saw the bear I was barefoot, at night, alone in the woods alone with no flashlight. I started backing away and clapping because I had heard somewhere that you should make noise when you come across a bear. Thinking back on it, I'm not sure that clapping was such a good idea, but it was what I latched onto in my concerned state.
I was also charged by an elefant once when I was on top of an unmoving land rover. I was scared out of my mind, but I had enough time to think through two scenarios: 1. Jump off the land rover and run. 2. Stay on the land rover and hope the driver will move it before the elefant gores me. I 'opted' for two, or perhaps I was just paralysed with fear, but I clearly remember concidering the two options.
What do these situations say about relevance? Well I suppose that the most relevant imput in all cases was that which put me in danger and possible ways to escape the danger. In the ladder situation it happened too fast to consciously process, my body functioned at the reflexive level (however that works). In the bear example, I had some time available to concider solutions but I actively concidered only one. In the elephant example, I actively concidered two possible solutions. I also thought about other relavant information (male elephants often false charge but females charge for real, elephants often pull their ears back when they really charge, the driver probably knows what he's doing, etc). In the end I think I ran out of time before reaching a satisfactory conclusion.
It seems clear that in general, when we are confronted with a dangerous situation it would be to our benefit to attend to the imput that would contribute to resolving the situation. That could even be seen as a selection force for the development of the cognitive preference for relevance. Individuals who were easily distracted by non-relevant imputs could be more likely to be injured in dangerous situations and thus, more likely not to pass on their genetic material.
-Sven
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