Brain recognition patterns & surviving disasters

[EX121]

I just watched a great program about surviving disasters. One of the take away lessons is that the brain uses 'pattern recognition' when processing information. Which means its always looking for simular events in your past when confronted with new information. Such as oh that's a horse, when in fact it may be mule. Or one example is the smoke detector goes off, your first reaction may be no big deal because it always been no big deal in the past, causing you to discount the smoke in the air.
Another example. Last summer we were sitting outside our cabin, our little poodle jumped up and barked, when I looked over the truck my first thought was why are those bushes moving. Well it wasn't the bushing moving but a big mule deer buck's antler tips.
From the show, the researcher made a big point of if you don't practice things like fire drills or other emergency procedures and build both physical & mental memory then you are less likly to survive. Even if you never experience the disaster you practiced for, those that have practiced and then experience some type of emergency survive better. Because the brain can adapt the practice to the new situation.
food for thought.

[Matt In Oklahoma]

Good stuff. i was gonna make fun of you for having a poodle but then i looked at my pug and decided not to because he's so blind, deaf and dumb he wouldnt have known the deer was there LOL

[EX121]

Yeah, I can't get away with always saying it's my wife's dog. Pugs are cool.

[Bearman202]

Actually, that pattern recognition problem is the reason why time seems to move so fast when we get older. We've already seen so much that when we see something, we tag it, "name" and move on. When you're young, you take the time to stop and actually look at whatever it is. We go through life scanning our environment, rather than actually looking at it. That can be useful if you're setting up some cammo, (make it look like something else, something that people see every day and pay no attention to) or it can work against you because you're the one doing the scanning, instead of actually looking. Count the number of fireplugs on your way to work if you want to see how this works. I'll bet there are a lot more than you thought. Then, count the number of gas stations there are. How many places that offer food. It's a fun exercise.

[monkeybird]

The same thing happened to me and my husband when the house alarm system sounded. It had done it twice in the past. What did we do, why ran to the box to turn it off without first investigating the reason! Dumb. But our previous experience indicated that it was a false alarm, so we acted accordingly. Lucky for us, it was another false alarm. But it could just have easily been the real deal. Just like with the smoke detector that goes off if you like your bread toasted dark.

I have poodles, big stardard ones, so I obviously think poodles are GREAT. Anyway, my large black male has amazing hearing acuity. He barks at so many sounds, we aren't sure what he's barking at. The other day, I noticed his bark was different. Low and behold, this different, urgent bark was at a man who'd came on our property. I now know that even dogs have different barks, so pay attention.

I'm the world's worse about not noticing pattern changes unless they slap me in the face. Did most of you learn this in the military? What are steps to take to increase your ability to notice pattern shifts?

[EX121]

To try and anwer monkeybird's question. In search & rescue & other operations I teach active scanning. You are standing at the center of a cube, its your responsibility to 'see' everything within that cube. I first tell folks to search the ground from in frot of your toes to the horizon, then raise your visual field to waist level and search the same area again, then lastly raise the field to shoulder level and look up. Then do the same thing to the right to the left & etc until the cube is covered. This technique is based upon how aircrews are trained to search for objects over the ocean.
another big clue is to look for something that looks different or odd. Those that hunt will know that they seldom see an entire deer, but see an ear move or a tail flick, or hair shine in the sun.

I think its important that we as people with the intention of surviving disasters realize that our brain unless trained by practice may mislead us for a few moments. so unless we train our brain by doing emergency drills our reaction time and recognition may lag.

The program made a good point of saying that even if you practiced for earthquake response and then experienced a tornado by practing for one you where better able to resond to the other.