Psychological stress in training.

[Gayson]

I'm doing a research proposal assignment for a social psychology class I'm taking at college.

I have to prepare a research proposal on a subject of my choice.  This proposal must include articles relevant to the study.

My topic of research is how mental stress effects the performance of a task conducted by the subject.  Would the subject work faster or slower?  Would the subject work more effeciently or make more errors than usual.

I came up with my idea while I was fondly recalling some show parades during my basic a couple of years ago.

I have searched Army.ca but really haven't found anything of much use.

I was wondering if, the CF had any studies or articles on the psychological effects caused on a student when put under stress on course, mostly specific to instantaneous effects like those I have defined above.  I figure that the CF would have a reason why we train soldiers the way we do other then that of some course officers.

Are any such articles or studies by the CF on this subject available on the DIN (I don't have access myself but if I new where to look my unit would probably help me get it) or public domain?  Has anyone seen such documents in the CF?

 

[paracowboy]

send me a pm Monday morning to remind me, and I'll search the DIN at lunch time. Maybe I can find something. Or I can just go pester the Ossifer-types. They'd be likely to know of any. 'Specially the CO. He's a cerebral kinda fella.

 

[Gayson]

Thanks paracowboy.

 

[paracowboy]

I live but to serve. I give and give...it hurts, and I give a little more.
Seriously, remind me Monday.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Check with these folks: http://www.cfc.forces.gc.ca/home_e.html .  I know that a few decades back the joint staff course was designed with stress peaks and valleys (as most such courses are) - the students were briefed, on arrival, on the whys and wherefores.

Another potential source is: http://www.rmc.ca/academic/arts/milpsych_e.html .

As a general rule military leadership courses, especially, ought to be designed to see how people react under different levels of stress.  In military skills courses it is also important to see if candidates can perform the required tasks under realistic, highly stressed, combat conditions.

General Hillier's recent remarks reminding Canadians, including military personnel, that the Canadian Forces are not the civil service is important.  Sailors, soldiers and aviators need to be trained to do some very complex tasks - some requiring a great deal of analytical thought - under conditions which, quite simply, rarely exist in civilian occupations other than e.g. firefighting.

Many, many years ago a rather Colonel Blimpish looking (and sounding) general was invited to speak at a major luncheon club on the subject of 'The military mind'.  (One could almost imagine the snickers amongst the '70ish business school types who extended the invitation.)  He appeared in best bib and tucker, red face, red tabs and a chest full of ribbons and said something like: "There is a military mind.  It is one which is conditioned to make real life and death decisions under conditions of noise, stress and real, physical and mental fear.  These decisions must always be made in too little time and with too little information.  Procrastination is never an option; mistakes are common but errors in judgement must be rare - or too many young men die before breakfast.  Having made those life and death decisions, being certain that one could have done better "if only" one must lie down, get a few, too few hours of dreamless sleep and start the whole process over again.  Are any of you up to it?"

 

[Slim]

Quote from a recruiting/training document;

"The use and/or application of psycholgical stress in training has been discontinued due to the amount of psychological stress involved in the application...!"Good luck on your paper. ;D

Slim

 

[KevinB]

Everyone will have their own personal points where the input stress will stip being helpful and overcome them.

Look thru Grossman's "On Combat"

IIRC there are points about this -- as well it has been found that individuals learn very differently under stress - deeply ingraining some of the lessons/actions etc. - but not necessarily all.

 

[Gayson]

Thanks everyone for your posts, all very helpful.

Documentation I am looking for in particular should be on how candidates react to stress on course.  Though articles on stress in combat would be helpful, they do not cover reaction to stress in a controlled environment because battle is a chaotic event. 

My research proposal relies on reactions caused in an controlled laboratory like environment, course is my best bet because instructors have control on the stress applied to candidates.

My proposal relies on 2 variables:

Independent variable: Time limits on the task and the difficulty on the task itself
Dependant variable:  The subjects stressed gauged by the amount of errors and how efficiently they work.

Negative reinforcement would be used when the subject fails or does poorly in a task, this is to ensure that they "want" to do well and thus feel stressed at the prospect of failure.

How would this apply to a course?

Candidates are being show paraded with inspections:

Independent variable:  They have a limited time to arrange and present their kit to standard prescribed by the instructor

dependant variable:  Candidates make mistakes as they're freaking out (missing loops in their boots when lacing up, forgetting small details, even putting their boots on before pants, yes I've done that before!), also how efficiently they work or even how well they work together under stress.

negative reinforcement for failure, push-ups / more parades.

Everyone will have their own personal points where the input stress will stip being helpful and overcome them.

You have raised an intersting point I have not considered.  So far I have hypothesized that perfomance would decrease as stress increases forming somewhat of a postive linear or curved shape relationship.  Some people work well under a certain amount of stress and so their performance would increase with stress for a duration of the testing.

I'm going to have to add this point to the limitations section of my paper, thanks KevinB!

 

[3rd Horseman]

I'm not sure how this will help but it seems applicable to your paper.

  During the early 90s when they clamped down on the stress that could be applied during training the CLC school in Europe which I was commanding at the time had to develop a way to stress the students without the old tactics. End result was as follows.

  Students were sent on a 7 day ex that would use the first 2 days to sleep deprive, increase hunger, wear down through exposure to the elements and apply a level of mental stress by giving them thinking tasks. During days 3 and 4 they would do all aspects of day 1 and 2 except the tasks would get easier. In the day 5 and 6 all would be tested on a task they were designed to fail. The stress level was at its highest and the ability to extract themselves from the fail was the test. On the final day when full exhaustion was present the tests would change to team organization leadership tests under maximun physical exertion but with simple tasks that required control of the whole team to succeed.
  The results were from my opinion excellent, later on we were directed to shorten training and we could never get as good a result with a 5 day exercise. The key being that many can fake the attitude thing and food thing for 3 days and hold on for the day 5 but 7 days was a wonder day people collapsed or rose to the occasion. Any longer and errors would occur that would achieve no training value or would start manifesting as soldiers turning off.

For what its worth.

 

[Gayson]

during day 3 and 4, how did the students perform with the easier tasks?  Did they do better since the tasks were easier, or worse since they were more exhausted?

 

[stukirkpatrick]

Negative reinforcement would be used when the subject fails or does poorly in a task, this is to ensure that they "want" to do well and thus feel stressed at the prospect of failure.

I am a bit unsure about your usage of "negative reinforcement" - negative reinforcement (easily confused, believe me  ) involves taking something bad away in order to reinforce the previous behaviour (if you want the students to keep failing, take away pushups after failure)

Do you mean to use "positive punishment"?  ie adding something bad after a behaviour you want to change (if you want students to stop failing, give them pushups or other negative stimulus after failure)

Clear as mud?  ???

 

[Gayson]

By negative reinforcement I mean something bad would happen as a means to make the subjects not want to fail.

Positive reinforcement would be to do something good as an award for success.


I suppose I could be mistaken in my terms though.

 

[stukirkpatrick]

You have the positive reinforcement def. right, just try not to think of positive and negative meaning good and bad, think of them as in math.

Basically reinforcement means you want the behaviour to stay the same, either by adding or taking something away (positive or negative) since you're "reinforcing" the behaviour

While punishment means you want the behaviour to change and are either adding or subtracting something in order to discourge the same behaviour. 



Just a term correction but it could save you some marks down the road 

 

[3rd Horseman]

Days 3 and 4 they performed at about the same level those that did not were marked for possible fail and those that excelled viewed to be in the top finishers.

Negative result was to fail someone and send them packing, result was lose of acting lacking pay and possibly never to be promoted ever again. Now that is a negative result. We always looked to fail someone during each phase of the training to ensure everyone knew they could be next if they failed a task.

Positive result was to finish the course and be automatically promoted big pay raise from Cpl to MCpl back then.

 

[Haggis]

Having taught more leadership and trade course than I care to remember, I found that the students are the biggest source of stress.   They quite easily will mentally magnify the consequences of ther actions, partiucularly when thier actions reflect negatively on them.

I've never failed a student, but lots of student have failed my courses.  They all fail themselves, through lack of preparation, motivation, desire or skills.  I just do the paperwork.

We always looked to fail someone during each phase of the training to ensure everyone knew they could be next if they failed a task.

I've been "taught by" people like you.   People who make it a sport to see how many potentially good trainees they can wash out.   People who don't give a rats tail for the skill or motivation of the student or the needs of the regiments who sent them to learn something as long as they can stroke their own ego by running a "hard" course.

The way you and your kind operate, the student is more focussed on surviving the instructors than assimilating the course content.  People like you produced the leaders who made the 90's so enjoyable : for the rest of us.  And don't go telling me it was those leaders that got us through the Medak, Sarajevo, Op Storm and held IFOR together.  That was the previous generation, before the rampant Ramboizm of the training system.

You ever pulled shyte like that on one of my courses, Mr. Horse, and your keester would be in front of the Old Man so fast your watch would be 4 hours behind.

Sum up.

 

[Gayson]

You have the positive reinforcement def. right, just try not to think of positive and negative meaning good and bad, think of them as in math.

Basically reinforcement means you want the behaviour to stay the same, either by adding or taking something away (positive or negative) since you're "reinforcing" the behaviour

While punishment means you want the behaviour to change and are either adding or subtracting something in order to discourge the same behaviour. 



Just a term correction but it could save you some marks down the road 

Thanks for the correction, there are more than just marks on the line here.

The Teacher had announced that the person with the best research proposal will get $200 from her.  She said to think of it as the research funding. 

 

[Scants]

Here is a link to an article by Col. Bernd Horn.  In the section on "controlling fear" he discusses the benefits of realistic training, education, etc. 
http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/engraph/vol5/no2/PDF/Leadership_e.pdf

Another is the article "Fearlessness and Courage: A Laboratory Study of Paratrooper Veterans of the Falklands War" by McMillan and Rachman, British Journal of Psychology (1987). It is a study comparing stress response and fear/fearlessness between bomb-disposal operators and paras.  Training was given as a possible reason for lower stress response in the paras. You should be able to get this article from your school library.
Hope this helps a bit.

Scants

 

[Dirt Digger]

Do a google search for the term, "stress inoculation". 

Basically, exposing a person to a small controlled stress after being taught stress coping techniques.  This in turn will allow them to mentally cope with a similar stressor of greater magnitude, because they've already experienced it in the past.

 

[stukirkpatrick]

If you needed to show the importance of stress research in training by comparing it to operational examples, there is an interesting volume of "Dispatches" (Vol 10 No. 1, February 2004) called "Stress Injury and Operational Deployments" if you can track it down through your unit - it talks about Stress, "Combat Stress Reaction" and symptoms and treatment techniques that can possibly prevent PTSD forming (however this is not always possible).

Granted, this would probably be useful only if you are proposing a military related experiment, but it does show the extremes of stress that can occur, and it does include examples of types of training that can be done to help reduce stress.

 

[KevinB]

I would be curious to knwo if any studies have been done about the chnage in range practices - where we used to have troops in the butts changing targets with the the ATS ranges this no longer happens -- I wonder if the rounds passing over the butts where in some what stress inocculating?