On CSGnet years ago Bill recounted an experience of someone skiing down a slope, approaching a choice to go left or right around a tree, and running into the tree. The speculation was that they were controlling to move toward successive features of the slope perceived as continuing a path downward. Faced with a forced choice, the tree that divided two equally good paths became the focus of attention, and thereby became the mistaken reference value for direction downslope.
Interesting evidence in this article about direction of gaze in football (soccer) penalty shots. Creating what you fear.pdf (1.4 M
B)
In the article, control to avoid adverse consequences (the skiier hitting the tree; the ball hitting the post) is identified with ‘anxiety’, which in PCT is a categorial ‘emotion’ perception based in part on sensations due to somatic preparation for producing the called-for control outputs. Control from that Category level intrudes on control of target (skiing path; ball in upper corner of net).
The topic title points to a wider generalization that is familiar to some of us from experience. As the man said, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.”
Expecting that PCT will be misunderstood and rejected is maybe not the best stance.
I hope the skier survived but I think the “speculation” about why this happened is wrong. I can’t believe that speculation came from Bill because it is quite clear that this accident occurred because the skier was in a conflict about which of the two paths to take.
A PCT model of this event would have two control systems setting the reference for a lower level system controlling the angle of the skis. One system wants to angle the skis to the left, possibly because it is controlling for perceiving being on the least sloped path, which is to the left of the tree, while the other system wants to angle the skis to the right, possibly because it is controlling for perceiving being on the shortest path, which is to the right of the tree.
These two systems would have been of equal strength so the net reference sent to the system controlling ski angle was set to go directly toward the tree. Since the skier was moving rather fast there was not enough time to resolve the conflict (reorganize) before the tree intervened.
The explanation of this event as being due to the fact that “the tree that divided two equally good paths became the focus of attention, and thereby became the mistaken reference value for direction downslope” is not based on PCT. Maybe it’s based on “focus of attention” theory.
Maybe it’s evidence for the focus of attention theory explanation of the ski accident but it is not evidence for (or against) the PCT explanation.
That may be true but it’s a rather ironic claim in the context of this post. And since this is probably addressed to me, I should clarify by stating that I don’t expect that PCT will necessarily be rejected if it is misunderstood. Indeed, I think it is far more common for PCT to not be rejected because it is misunderstood.
