With this young man, we had talked quite a bit about what he was thinking and how his thoughts impacted his mental processing. ANTs make it hard for the brain to do well. The brain does best with good focus (a skill IM develops), a mental goal held in mind and being emotionally relaxed. With those conditions met, the brain is simply amazing! My IM student was successfully keeping his ANTs at bay, though not yet believing he could soar to new heights. He was holding his own.
For the first 30 minutes, his scores were about 10 - 15% higher than they should be with his best focus. I had left the room to get something and upon return he unexpectedly (because he had used the restroom upon arrival already) asked to go to the bathroom. He returned shortly, with a treat in his mouth. This treat was just like one he had earned the LAST time at IM. I had more of these treats in the IM room too but he hadn't earned any yet today. I didn't say anything and he started his next task. His scores were horrendous, much worse than earlier in the day. I knew if he was fighting ANTs, his score tended to be 5-10 ms too high, and if the ANTs were taking over, he would be 200 ms off. So this 50 ms error was atypical for him. It was a different pattern than I had seen before in him or even very often from anyone. We stopped and talked about what he was thinking in his brain - negative thoughts are usually the cause, especially when he'd been doing better just minutes earlier.
This young man is still at a stage that he can't always identify his thoughts, so without being able to express his thoughts, we just restarted the task to try again. This time, he began fidgeting at his pocket and his score was just as bad. I suggested that he was distracted by something in his pocket and he needed to think about getting a burst (scoring) and ignore what is in his pocket. Thinking about his pocket item was messing him up. He couldn't make his score go back down (the desired direction). Again, I stopped the task. This time I made him empty his pocket and found the rest of the treat that he had earned last time (giving him the benefit of the doubt.) When he immediately said, "Don't tell my mom, OK?" I had the confirmation that I suspected and responded with a gentle, "I'll just double check with her that you brought this with you today." My impulsive little 8 year old then immediately confessed that they were from my IM prize box and he had just taken them.
We spent some time talking about how sometimes our brains have impulsive thoughts. Sometimes one might even follow through on that impulsive thought too. We can't control what thoughts come into our mind, but we don't have to listen to them. But, this is the interesting part, when we know we did something wrong, how does it impact our brain? Not following our conscience makes it very hard to think and focus. He had just experienced a major fallout in his ability to focus and do well. The topic went full circle as I said, by making it right (as he had), our brains can often let go and we can think clearly again. This is exactly what happened. It took just 2 or 3 minutes and he was scoring very well again. I found this experience fascinating.
Here's the mental patterns that I see in IM with different emotions/thoughts:
Anxiety - a person just speeds up about 10 - 30 ms, just about every hit. They can't slow it down easily. The first time adult women do IM, they can speed up 150 ms if they are fairly anxious. If you ask them if they are anxious, quite often the women will answer that they don't think so, but later in training, they will be able to identify this numeric pattern as anxiety, and may be able to tell when they are anxious with out the feed back too.
Highly motivated - the body posture changes ever so slightly, knees bend slightly, weight moves to the toes, head/face moves towards the computer screen a fraction of an inch. The IM score looks like a lot more greens, yellows are close to the green range and there are very few red hits. When a student hits a red, the very next hit is green, corrected. The yellow and reds are equally early and late. Scores move down for 3 - 5 hits, up one, then down 3-5 more hits.
Loss of motivation/low motivation - Weight goes mostly onto one foot, arms lower ever so slightly. The IM score often errs on the late side more. Reds on the late side can be two or three in a row before they are fixed, scores slowly sneak up. Now the score goes up very slightly, tenths of milliseconds, for 3-5 hits and then down for one or two, sneaking up 3-5 more next. If it sneaks up 8 -10 hits in a row, it's more likely ANTs.
ANTs - Automatic Negative Thoughts - Mild ANTs look like the student is just about 10% higher than their best day and can't seem to bring this down. (Mild ANTs is what this boy had been experiencing before using the restroom.) Moderate ANTs - the student's score jumps up in just 5-7 hits 30% higher than it should be, then the score comes down to only 10- 15% too high. Soon, with another burst of ANTs the score will jump up again. The second the ANT takes some control in the brain, the score goes up (hits reds usually), the longer the ANT is in charge the higher the score goes, but the child often refocuses with the sound of the red hits persistently reminding them to focus. Then they pull the score back down for a while, until they have the next moderate strength negative thought. Severe ANTs - the child begins to purposefully hit off the beat. You can tell this because they hit 200 ms or larger for many hits in a row - just not even possible with any amount of focus. The guide sounds automatically correct you after a week or so, you have to consciously choose to hit 200 ms off consistently. Students usually will just stop the task at that point, give up. With most ANTs there's some body language along with it, slight to major dropping of the head backwards, hits more ballistically, or he stomps hard a hit or two.
Low blood sugar - The child has all the body language of highly motivated brain but just can't beat their score. They are trying hard, but just can't do it. If given some protein quality carbs - within 3 - 5 minutes their scores are back in the goal range. The body language often says they want to lay down but the body is 'open', meaning the chest is up, face turned up still, open to people. With severe ANTs, students often say they are tired as well and with ANTS they want to lay down and their bodies are more closed - they will put up their hoodies, but their face towards the floor, curl their chest in much more.
Being too tired is similar to low blood sugar but usually that pattern has slightly more irregular hitting and there's some sluggish body language. They don't drop their heads like with severe ANTs, they are truly tired - didn't sleep well, too late in the day, or had all sugar before arriving. Another close one to this is when a child has taken cough medicine. Inducing drowsiness, this medication makes it so the child just can't quite make their goal - they are 5 - 20% too high and slightly on the late side. Body posture is somewhere between the highly motivated and the loss of motivation, just sluggish I'd say.
Forcing success - Some children "want it" too much. It's as if they force the issue, they try so hard their body looks just a bit too tense. Claps are slightly harder in nature. The teeth are slightly gritted. And the IM score actually fluctuates a bit erratically. The score slowly goes up no matter how hard you think, "Make it go down!!!" You have to be RELAXED and focused in IM. Focus is not enough, motivation is not enough. You also have to trust yourself that your brain can do it, you can't force the score down. But in saying that, willing it is exactly how students get phenomenal gains, but they have to will it with control. Trust is more important in the elite range, when timing is subconcious. Will is more important early on, when the timing is a conscious action.
Happiness/Excitement - Finally, too much positive emotion can been seen in the numeric patterns too. When you see a person doing extremely well.... say they are trying to get 10 green hits in a row and all of a sudden hit too fast usually, pretty far off. I can feel right along with them as the excitement builds, 7 in a row, 8 in a row, not 9..... ohh, I'm going to do it... oops!!! I messed up. Often the individual stops breathing (holds their breath), inhibits the slight typical overflow body movement that accompanies the task, and tenses up with positive excitement, only to find that they mess up. Most people that score a 20 in a row do it subconsciously. They are clapping along and all of a sudden register consciously a thought like, "boy I've had a lot of greens." They then look at the screen and notice there's a 20 in a row or more. They trust their brain to do the work. When you move the work into your conscious part of the brain, you just can't process it as efficiently Your best mental processing is done subconsciously. Counting as you get closer and closer to your goal is conscious thought and usually does not work.
So today I add another emotion into my numerical pattern knowledge bag, Guilt or Fear. Today's emotion from the eight year old child who 'snitched' a treat made his score go up as much as moderate ANTs would have. The difference was that he couldn't focus and bring it back down. He just hung out way up there, almost as if his brain shut down. I am amazed how much this state of mind impacted this boy's mental processing. I had told him when his score was so high that I didn't believe it was ANTs causing the problem. It had to be something else was happening. His body posture said it wasn't ANTs as well. I explained to him even that his claps were regular, not too hard, giving the physical reason why I thought he needed to analyze what he was thinking and try to share it. He usually throws his head back with moderate ANTs too, but this time he remained very composed, just his score went up. I could not see his emotion in his body language ( he was at hiding the truth. But there was definitely something very powerful impacting his ability to think. What was he thinking? What thoughts were going through his head?
I think it was a great experience for him, a great opportunity for him to learn about himself. A chance to learn that when you are impulsive and make a poor choice, first of all, your brain stops working well. And as importantly, you can reconcile the situation, fix it and move on. Finally, when you do move on, your brain returns to quality functioning again!
I am fairly sure that what I saw was an emotion that triggered a chemical reaction. I didn't pick up on the brain response very much physically though, only numerically, and situationally. I'm assuming the emotion was guilt, but I suppose it could have been fear, fear of getting caught. I'm ruling out pure distraction, meaning he's simply thinking about the treat in his pocket. Distraction does not cause that persistent of error, it comes and goes. This was major persistent bad timing, bad processing.
I've always wanted to document some of the subtle numeric patterns I see so I took this opportunity to do it. I find the brain absolutely fascinating!
