Automatic behaviors

FIGURE 2.4. The Continuum between Conscious and Automatic Behavior (based on Reason, 1990). 

Automatic behaviors Moderate (50) High (80) Severe sleepiness including idiopathic hypersomnia Comparable with sleepwalking... 

A type of automatic behavior, which can continue for hours, has been observed in addicts who inject large doses of central nervous system stimulants. Dyskinesias can occur, with strange facial and tongue movements or jerky motions of the arms and legs and a never-ending repetition of certain actions. Such stereotyped activity is induced in laboratory animals with high doses of amfetamine. 

This is a minor example of automatized behavior, as, in most cases, personal space behavior can readily be made conscious by calling people s attention to it and asking them to observe themselves. When a conscious action becomes automatized, though, it may be difficult to make it conscious again, especially if there were unpleasant emotional experiences associated with the action. For example, suppose a boy was called a clingy wimp for frequently hugging and hanging around his father, and was pushed away by his father. There may be an unconscious equation that Too close = unloved by Daddy. ... 

Enhanced automaticity may occur in cells that normally display spontaneous diastolic depolarization— the sinus andAVnodes and the His-Purkinje system. [) Adrenergic stimulation, hypokalemia, and mechanical stretch of cardiac muscle cells increase phase 4 slope and so accelerate pacemaker rate, whereas acetylcholine reduces pacemaker rate both by decreasing phase 4 slope and by hyperpolarization (making the maximum diastolic potential more negative). In addition, automatic behavior may occur in sites that ordinarily lack spontaneous pacemaker activity e.g., depolarization of ventricular cells by ischemia) may produce such abnormal" automaticity. 

Scene approach should consist of several stages. On all calls you should turn off emergency lights and sirens as you near the scene. It is not wise to announce your arrival before you have made a careful through the windshield scene survey for danger. It is important to practice the same protocol each time so that the practice becomes automatic behavior. Never assume that the dispatch information regarding the call is accurate and that the scene is safe. 

Unconscious or automatic behavior, characterized by daydreaming, inattention, or lack of focus caused be a variety of factors... 

Individual operator competencies are also often discussed in relation to the Skill, Rule, and Knowledge (SRK) framework. Vicente (1999) described three hierarchical levels of human behavior skill-, rule-, and knowledge-based behaviors. Each of the levels within the SRK framework defines a different level of cognitive control or human action. Skill-based behavior occurs in routine situations that require highly practiced and automatic behavior and where there is only small conscious control on behalf of the operator. Skill-based behavior consists of smooth, automated, and highly integrated patterns of action that are performed without conscious attention. 

Let s consider some basic principles about behavior-change techniques that can faciUtate the development of the most effective intervention for a particular situation. First, it s important to understand the difference between other-directed, self-directed, and automatic behavior (Watson and Tharp 1993). 

We have already covered a variety of situational factors that influence the occurrence of safe or at-risk behavior. This included a sequence of questions to ask in order to decide whether instructional intervention is needed, whether another approach to corrective action would be more cost-effective—from redesigning a task to clarifying expectations and providing behavior-based feedback. Here we examine some basic principles about behavior and behavior-change techniques that should influence your choice of an improvement intervention. We begin with a distinction among other-directed, self-directed, and automatic behavior (Watson and Tharp, 1997). 

This chapter is organized as follows. Section 3.1 describes the BIF model. Sections 3.2 and 3.3 present the user-driven and automatic behavioral transformations, respectively. Finally, Section 3.4 summarizes the behavioral transformations applied in Hercules. 

The Hercules system provides an integrated environment for the behavioral synthesis and optimization of hardware behavior. It performs both user-driven and automatic behavioral transformations, and produces as output one or more sequencing graph abstractions of the optimized behavior, described in SIF. The flow of operation in Hercules is described below. 

Perform automatic behavioral optimizations. In-line expansion and operator to library mapping are transformations that are guided by the designer. Upon completion of these optional user-driven transformations, a suite of automatic behavioral transformations is performed to optimize the behavior. Note that these optimizations caimot be applied to a block model because of its declarative semantics (the list of optimizations is described in Section 3.3). Optimizations include compilo -like optimizations such as dead-code elimination and variable unfolding. 

---