The Act of Creation (78 page)

It would seem that behavioural matrices on every level of a given
hierarchy are triggered off by digital-type all-or-nothing impulses;
if the matrix is flexible it will function as a digital-to-analogue
converter; and will in its turn trigger off sub-codes at certain critical
limits as analogue-to-digital converters. But theorizing about the
nervous system in terms of computer models is a risky affair, and may
yet lure psychology into a cul-de-sac -- as the telephone-exchange model
did half a century ago.*
Summary: Rigidity and Freedom
Let me recapitulate some points which emerge when the observations in
the present chapter are taken in conjunction with the broader issues
discussed in Book One.
On the elementary levels of learning a skill a varying amount of
stamping-in is required, depending on she organism's 'ripeness' for the
task; or, to put it the other way round, depending on the 'naturalness'
of the task relative to the organism's existing skills. Learning to type
requires more stamping-in than learning to ride a bicycle; the former
is comparable to the blindfold memorizing of a maze, the latter to the
gradual adjustment of various interlocking servo-mechanisms. In both
cases the learning process consists in the integration of elementary
skills -- the members of the nascent matrix -- into a single pattern
which can be activated as a unit. But even in acquiring a mechanical
skill like typing, bit-by-bit learning plays in fact a lesser part than
seems to be the case. The typist's mental map of the keyboard is' not
simply a rote-learned aggregation of twenty-six letters (plus numbers
and signs) distributed at random; it is a 'coded' map, structured by a
system of co-ordinates -- the resting position of the fingers -- and
by the frequency-rating of letters, syllables, etc. These patterns,
superimposed on the keyboard map, could be compared to the mnemonic
aids used in the learning of nonsense syllables. Whole-learning invades
bit-learning at every opportunity; if the meaningless is to be retained,
the mind must smuggle meaning into it.
Once a skill has been mastered so that it can be activated as a trait it
functions more or less autonomously and automatically. This applies to
both perceptual and motor skills, from the perceptual constancies and
motor reflexes upwards. Learning to find the right key on the keyboard
requires concentration, focal awareness; but when the letter-habit
has been acquired it becomes 'instinctive', unconscious; attention is
freed to concentrate on meaning, and can 'let the fingers take care of
themselves'; their control is relegated to lower levels of awareness and,
in all likelihood, to lower levels in the nervous system. Thus the work of
Gastaut and Beck clearly suggests that 'once we have learned something we
no longer rely so much on our cortex and reticular formation. Those things
we do
without thinking
. . . may depend more on the older primitive
parts of the nervous system such as the limbic structures, thus releasing
higher centres such as the cortex for other tasks. . . . Common sense
indicates such a possibility.; electro-physiology suggests it. . . .' [5]*
The same skilled action -- driving a motor-car or playing a nocturne
by heart -- can be performed automatically, or in semi-conscious
absent-mindedness, or with full concentration. But the motorist who
concentrates on driving fast along a crowded road has his attention
focussed on matters of general strategy -- e.g. whether it is safe to
overtake or not, whereas the actual manipulation of the wheel and pedals
are still carried out automatically; and the pianist trying to give
his best, still finds the keys automatically. We again find confirmed
that the code which controls skilled behaviour always operates through
sub-codes which function on lower levels of awareness. Shifting the
focus of attention to these sub-codes produces the familiar 'paradox
of the centipede'. Its equivalent in perception is the loss of meaning
which results when a word is repeated monotonously and attention becomes
focussed on the
Klangbild
(cf. 'ce-du, ce-du, ce-du', Book One,
p. 75
f.; even more painful is the semantic
paralysis which sometimes befalls a writer while correcting the proofs
of a forthcoming book.

 

 

The lower we descend in the hierarchy the more stereotyped, reflex-like
activities we find; and vice versa, flexibility increases with each step
upward. The more complex the skill, the more alternative variations
it offers for adaptable strategies: a matrix on the n+1 level has
more degrees of freedom than a matrix on the n level. But whether
they will be utilized and produce varied performance, depends on the
environment. Monotonous environments induce repetitive, stereotyped
habits; the degrees of freedom in the matrix freeze up. 'Overlearning'
is the fixation, through repetition in unvarying conditions, of one
among many possible variations in the exercise of a skill at the expense
of all others. Thus habits become automatized (a) because they operate
on the lower strata of the hierarchy with few degrees of freedom, like
hitting a typewriter key or depressing the accelerator pedal; (b) when a
complex skill is reduced through environmental monotony to a single-track
habit. 'Monotony' is of course a subjective term referring to lack of
change in those features of the environment which are relevant to the
subject's interests. For all we know the streets of Koenigsberg through
which Emmanuel Kant took his fixed walk at a fixed hour for forty years
might have been wildly exciting to another person.

 

 

The integration of motor-patterns into larger and more complex skills
in the process of learning is paralleled by a similar progression on the
perceptual side. The telegraphist who has advanced from 'letter-habits'
through 'word-habits' to 'phrase-habits' in his sending technique, has
at the same time learned to take in several words and even phrases 'at
a mouthful'. The pianist takes in a whole musical phrase from the score
at a glance; both input and output are no longer measured in bits but in
chunks.* The more complex the skill, the bigger the chunks in space or
time which must be taken into account. The skilled soccer player keeps
his eye on the ball, but is at the same time aware of the positions
and peculiarities of the other players on the field. The motorist,
driving to his office, chooses the least congested road among several
alternatives by consulting the mental map in his head. The typist, who
deliberately lags a phrase or two behind dictation, expands the duration
of the psychological present to take in a bigger chunk of meaning. While
listening to speech or music we do the same; while talking we trigger
off long sequences of muscular patterns as a whole. As we become more
proficient in any skilled activity, we learn 'to put feedback loops
around larger and larger segments of our behaviour'. [6]
Though motor learning proceeds, generally speaking, from lower to higher
levels, and performance in the reverse direction, this does not mean that
in performing we run through the whole gamut of the learning process
in reverse gear. As one learns to play a sonata by heart, one needs
less and less often to consult the score, and in the end the visual
feedback which was indispensable during learning can be dispensed with
entirely; the habit now functions autonomously. The skilled pianist can
play blindfold, a man can knot his tie without looking into the mirror,
the physician can tell the patient's pulse without looking at his watch,
the adult reads without spelling out the letters. When the skill has
been mastered, the props which served the learning process are kicked
away -- as Maxwell kicked away the scaffolding of his mechanical model
when he arrived at his equations (see Appendix I). In this respect, too,
the learning process is irreversible.
The
autonomy
of the codes which pattern behaviour is a phenomenon
which we have met on all levels -- from the self-regulatory activities of
the morphogenetic field, through the fixed action-patterns of instinct
behaviour, to the perceptual frames responsible for constancies,
illusions, and our ways of seeing the world through coloured filters,
as it were. But on the level of complex skills, the 'self-assertive'
tendencies of acquired motor-patterns are particularly striking. To repeat
an obvious example, one cannot disguise one's handwriting sufficiently
to fool the expert; even the skilled burglar has his individual style
in safe-breaking which gives him away. Autonomy and self-government are
basic principles in the hierarchy of skills. Thus 'the performance 'of
very quick movements ', Lashley observed, 'indicates their independence of
current control. "Whipsnapping" movements of the hand can be regulated
in extent, yet the entire movement, from initiation to completion
requires less than the reaction time for a tactile or kinaesthetic
stimulation of the arm, which is about one-eighth of a second, even when
no discrimination is involved. . . . The finger-strokes of a musician
may reach sixteen per second in passages which call for a definite
and changing order of successive finger-movements. The succession of
movements is too quick even for visual reaction time. . . . Sensory
control of movement seems to be ruled out in such acts.' [7]
Similar conclusions were reached, as already mentioned, by Ruch,
concerning voluntary movement in general. In view of the rapidity
of skilled movements which are too fast to leave room for visual
or proprioceptive feedback control, Ruch, like Lashley, assumed the
operation of pre-set time-tension patterns of muscle contraction in
the nervous system: 'The cerebral-cerebellar circuit may represent not
so much an error-correcting device as a part of a mechanism by which
an instantaneous order can be extended in time . . . and thus reduce
the troublesome transients involved in the correction of movement by
output-informed feedbacks.' [8]
The tendency to reduce those 'troublesome' feedbacks to a minimum is the
essence of habit-formation and automatization. It follows the principle
of parsimony; if we had to concentrate on each movement we made, there
would be no room for thought. On the other hand, this inherent tendency
to form neural organizations which, one might say, jealously defend their
autonomy against interference from a changing outside world, makes us
all, in varying degrees, the slaves of habit. We may reduce the degree
of enslavement, but the basic predicament is inherent in the hierarchic
structure or nervous organization, where 'the structure of the input does
not produce the structure of the output, but merely modifies intrinsic
nervous activities that have a structural organization of their own'. The
quotation (repeated from
p. 434
) referred to
instinct behaviour and the lower motor functions, but it is equally
applicable, as we have seen, to complex, acquired skills. These may have
a high degree of flexibility, but they nevertheless operate through
automatized sub-skills on the lower ranges of the hierarchy, which
manifest themselves in the individual 'touch' of the pianist, the 'style'
of the tennis-player, the fixed mannerisms, quirks, idiosyncrasies,
and unconscious rituals which are our personal hallmarks.

 

 

How much of his potential freedom a person puts to active use depends
partly on environmental factors -- the novelty, intensity, vexatiousness,
etc., of the stimuli to which he is exposed. But the nature and amount of
stimutation derived from a given input depends, of course, on personality
stricture. One type of individual will respond to monotonous situations
with stereotyped reactions; another type will find monotony vexatious,
that is to say,
stimulating
. 'Active boredom', as this kind
of reaction may be called, can provide alternatives to habituation;
the subject may experience the very absence of change as a novelty --
as prison is a novelty to the first offender; and since the environment
refuses to offer variety, he will vary his own performance to provide
it. Hence the apparently spontaneous changes in fashions and crazes,
not only in human society but also in colonies of captive chimpanzees.

 

 

If, on the other hand, the challenge from the enviromnent exceeds a
critical limit, behaviour will either become distintegrated, or the
challenge will be met by an original, 'super-flexible' response -- a
restructuring of the pattern of the skill. We have met examples of this on
all levels, from the 'prenatal skills' of morphogenesis, through Bethe's
mutilated insects to Lashley's rats and Köhler's chimpanzees. The
complex, acquired motor-skills, which we discussed in this chapter,
are capable of equally impressive emergency-reorganizations. The first
aircraftsman who, when his brakes refused to function on landing,
saved his plane by opening his parachute through the rear-window,
achieved a true bisociation of two unconnected skills. The violinist who
finishes his piece in spite of a broken E string; the typist managing
on a half-broken machine; the secret tunnel-builders in prisoner-of-war
camps; the legless war pilot winning a Victoria Cross; Renoir, crippled
with arthritis, continuing to paint with a brush fixed to his forearm
-- they all gave proof of an unexpected, creative surplus-potential in
the nervous system. Such accomplishments are more impressive than the
quasi-miraculous feats performed in panic or rage -- the latter are of
a quantitative order and do not involve the reorganization of pattern.

 

 

The homologous nature of the basic principles which operate on different
levels of the hierarchy becomes evident when we remember the conclusions
which emerged from the discussion of instinct behaviour: 'At one end of
the scale we find rituals, fixed action-patterns, vacuum and displacement
activities -- rigid, automatized, and compulsive, petrified habits. At the
other extreme we find . . . codes which govern behaviour of remarkable
flexibility, and original adaptations which lie outside the animal's
normal skills and habit repertory. [10]