Changing your mind.

[M2R]

I have been doing some thinking about how hard it is to implement meaningful and purposeful change in context to some comments here and my own experience. This started me wondering if there may be difficult for reasons other than simply having done something for a long time or for a large number of repetitions.

Looking into some of the research I do think there is more involved and something useful may come from a dialogue. "What we know from lab studies is that it's never too late to break a habit," Duhigg said. "Habits are malleable throughout your entire life. But we also know that the best way to change a habit is to understand its structure — that once you tell people about the cue and the reward and you force them to recognize what those factors are in a behavior, it becomes much, much easier to change."

Unless cited otherwise these are strictly my thoughts, interpretations, and opinions based on what I read and in no way representing facts.

Paraphrased and oversimplified, I am starting to think that for a golf stroke the brain works on context cueing to call up pre-recorded action sequences (subroutines). These initially get stored when enough learning experiences become associated with contexts and then get reinforced as that set of context/subroutine is accessed repeatedly. Eventually the subroutine is fired autonomously when the context cue is present even if that is inconsistent with the desired outcome.

In the process of learning something new, a person has to actively think about what they are doing and that can be very difficult. However, over time less and less thought is required as they store away more and more subroutines that are associated with contexts, or learn. That is pretty awesome unless the first set of subroutines stored away is flawed as there is no way to to start fresh by overwriting or deleting them.

A totally new set must be created, usually by breaking or interrupting the context to the old one and then creating a greater chance for the new one to trigger in the desired context than the old one. This is possible because there is also a reward sequence at the end of the context cueing action sequence. However, the old routines will remain in storage and can fire at any time, usually the most inopportune time.

It is clearly rewarding when a person goes to an instructor and for whatever reason (nerves, setting, club being physically moved into unfamiliar positions by instructor) they are able to bypass their stored routines and hit shots more like they desire. However when they return to their familiar location (range) and hit balls at full speed they are unable to reproduce that desired result as their pre-recorded sequence is simply processed over and over and nothing is accomplished.

Thus the need to do drills, slow swings, segment the swing and perform each segment individually, or just about anything that will break the context cue from firing the old subroutines. Well not anything, it still needs to be productive in associating the new performance into a new context cue that actually produces the desired result. If this can be accomplished there is a good chance the new routine will be automatically selected as the reward sequence at the end should have a much higher value.

Quote: Habits in Dual Process Models, Wendy Wood, Jennifer S. Labrecque, Pei-Ying Lin, and Dennis Rünger

A common theme across these various research literatures is that repeated action and the formation of habits is accompanied by dynamic shifts in neural activity, especially in cortico-basal ganglia circuits (Graybiel, 2008; Yin & Knowlton, 2006).  The functional neuroanatomy of the cortico-basal ganglia system underlies many of the characteristic features of habit automaticity, especially the cuing of responses by contexts with minimal responsiveness to goals.

Other features of habits, such as inflexible performance, also can be traced to particular neural substrates.  Inflexibility arises in part from the unitization or chunking of action sequences over time.  A chunk is an integrated memory representation that can be selected as a whole and executed with minimal attentional involvement.  Research on the neural substrates of chunking has identified neural markers for the start and end points of action sequences, presumably at the start and end of the learned progression of responses, and minimal neural responding in the middle, suggesting an integrated sequence representation (Fujii & Graybiel, 2003).

Quote: source

“There is a dual mind at play,” Wood said in a press release ahead of the convention. "Our minds don't always integrate in the best way possible. Even when you know the right answer, you can't make yourself change the habitual behavior.”

Habits are formed after a person has learned something new, like how to parallel park. This process engages the basal ganglia, or the part of the brain located in the prefrontal cortex that works to start and control movement and emotions. From there, it’s a three step process that Charles Duhigg, a reporter for The New York Times and author of The Power of Habit, refers to as a “habit loop.” There’s a cue, or trigger, which signals to your brain to turn a behavior into an automatic routine (parellel parking), followed by the actual routine of the behavior (each time someone finds themself in New York City), and then the reward. The reward, Duhigg told NPR, is the brain’s own personal cue for when it should recall the automatic behavior.

Quote: source

Habits are not readily changed by changing minds (Verplanken & Wood, 2006). Instead, habits can be broken by controlling the cues that trigger performance.

[iacas]

It is clearly rewarding when a person goes to an instructor and for whatever reason (nerves, setting, club being physically moved into unfamiliar positions by instructor) they are able to bypass their stored routines and hit shots more like they desire. However when they return to their familiar location (range) and hit balls at full speed they are unable to reproduce that desired result as their pre-recorded sequence is simply processed over and over and nothing is accomplished.

Thus the need to do drills, slow swings, segment the swing and perform each segment individually, or just about anything that will break the context cue from firing the old subroutines. Well not anything, it still needs to be productive in associating the new performance into a new context cue that actually produces the desired result. If this can be accomplished there is a good chance the new routine will be automatically selected as the reward sequence at the end should have a much higher value.

I generally agree and, for now, have one comment.

"Habits" are not quite the same thing as single athletic movements (like a golf swing). A habit might be something like "I put my left leg in my pants first" and changing that requires simply thinking about it enough (if you want to change it). Calling a golf swing a "habit" is a stretch, sometimes, because there's more of some parts and less of other parts at play. You can have all the desire in the world to change, and be 100% successful at putting your right leg in your pants first, but be completely unsuccessful at changing the way your wrists work in transition at 100% speed.

[M2R]

I generally agree and, for now, have one comment.

"Habits" are not quite the same thing as single athletic movements (like a golf swing). A habit might be something like "I put my left leg in my pants first" and changing that requires simply thinking about it enough (if you want to change it). Calling a golf swing a "habit" is a stretch, sometimes, because there's more of some parts and less of other parts at play. You can have all the desire in the world to change, and be 100% successful at putting your right leg in your pants first, but be completely unsuccessful at changing the way your wrists work in transition at 100% speed.

I do not disagree with anything you wrote. I actually never thought if a golf swing is a habit, just that it seemed to fit in rather well with a lot of the brain function pattern descriptions I was reading about. So I started to wonder if there was something to be gained by investigating and discussing it further. I was actually hoping someone here was a trained professional in this area of research that would be qualified to contribute and answer some questions.

In the literature they sometimes use the term automaticity instead of habit and define habits as having very specific subsets of features commonly associated with automaticity. Others use the two interchangeably and there appears to be no universal agreement on exactly what each very specifically and technically mean. Sometimes the technical meaning of a common word is not preserved in research papers. Regardless, I can not dispute what are and are not habits. My personal experience strongly suggests that athletic movement sequences can be habits and mine are, but you know just opinion.

In dual-process models, habit performance is mediated by a fast, automatic, unconscious processing system that reflects associations learned through experience.  This automatic system typically is contrasted with slow, deliberative, conscious processing that requires access to a working memory system of limited capacity. So the example you describe is specific to one system and it might be important to understand the differences, or not if you reject the whole dual-process concept.

In one post you mentioned that Bernhard Langer short circuited his yips by adopting a completely different technique. Really that is my basic premise, that he had something broken and to address the situation he replaced one technique with something completely different. I would attempt to say he changed his context so that the yips were not triggered in the new context because it seems to fit the research I was reading.

My golf seems very much like a habitual monster. I can review in front of a mirror or in my bedroom using foam balls very specifically what I want to work on that day but when I get to the range I can stand over a real ball and my mind just can not recall anything. It is almost ridiculous. I can start to take the club away from the ball and within a few inches know that I have reverted to my old swing pattern. What was so clear in the context of my bedroom is non-existent on the range.

I do not think it even has to be specific to golf. If a student habitually ignores what has been discussed and assigned by the instructor is there anything the instructor can do to short circuit this? Assign a fake primary goal and tangentially mention the real goal and stress that it is not important enough to bother with at this point? I do not know I am just spit balling here

[iacas]

My golf seems very much like a habitual monster. I can review in front of a mirror or in my bedroom using foam balls very specifically what I want to work on that day but when I get to the range I can stand over a real ball and my mind just can not recall anything. It is almost ridiculous. I can start to take the club away from the ball and within a few inches know that I have reverted to my old swing pattern. What was so clear in the context of my bedroom is non-existent on the range.

Leaving aside the possibility that your brain is built differently than almost anyone else's, that simply means you need to find a better way of transferring stuff. Some part of that will be willpower, some will just be knowing what and how to do something. Some of it will be trust - trusting that the thing you want to do is better than the thing you always do. Patience, too.

[M2R]

Leaving aside the possibility that your brain is built differently than almost anyone else's, that simply means you need to find a better way of transferring stuff. Some part of that will be willpower, some will just be knowing what and how to do something. Some of it will be trust - trusting that the thing you want to do is better than the thing you always do. Patience, too.

Thank you very much. Quite a lot to capture in three succinct sentences.