Ability to react

Thanks for bringing this up. Now that you've said it, I think I'd observed something similar about myself. Like you, I find it far easier to solve internal problems than external. In SCUBA class, I could sketch the inner mechanism of the 2nd stage, but I'd be the last to put my equipment together by the side of the pool.

Your description maps really well onto introversion and extroversion. I searched for psychology articles on extraversion, introversion and learning styles. A lot of research has been done in that area. For example:

Through the use of EPQ vs. LSQ and CSI questionnaires (see FOOTNOTE below), Furnham (1992) found that extraverts are far more active and far less reflective in their learning. They don’t need to chew over the information before they act on it.

Jackson and Lawty-Jones (1996) confirmed those findings with a similar study but fewer questionnaires (only EPQ vs. LSQ).

Zhang (2001) administered more questionnaires (TSI vs. SVSDS) to find that, unsurprisingly, having a social personality makes you more likely to want to employ external thinking style—that is, interact with others.

More studies used more questionnaires to find the same—i.e. Furnham, 1996; Furnham, Jackson, and Miller 1999; and many others, I’m sure.

The above seem to answer Swimmer963’s question: extraverted people are the ones who are better at actively applying the knowledge that they have quickly and on the spot in collaborative situations. Introverted people need time to reflect. Caveat: this conclusion is based on questionnaire studies, where people described their behavior instead of demonstrating it.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a single good experiment that addressed this question directly. But I did find this one…

Suda and Fouts (1980) set up an experiment where a sixth-grader would be left to believe that a little girl in the room next door had fallen off a chair. The sixth-grader then faced a choice: go into the girl’s room (active help) or go into the experimenter’s room (passive help) or continue with the “apparent” experiment (something about children’s drawings of people). If the sixth-grader tried to help, the experimenter would return. The peer was a confederate instructed not to initiate interactions or helping behavior.

I wish they'd included a table of their results in the article. Here’s what I managed to glean from the blurb: Overall, more extraverts helped. Extraverts tended to help actively, by going to the girl’s room themselves. Only a couple introverts tried to help actively; most of those who chose to help at all have done so passively.

During the interviews afterwards, half of the introverted kids said that they didn’t actively help because it might’ve been “wrong” to stop drawing.

What conclusions / interpretations can we draw from this experiment, aside the obvious? Introverted kids might not have been as good at reacting to the world around them as extraverted kids. This might be the very same dynamic that leads to introverted adults being unable to do as well in the real world “people situation” of the Quebec test as well as they could do on the written Ontario test.

FOOTNOTE:

A popular classification of personality traits in the articles I’ve read was due to the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ). Personality is measured across three dimensions: Extraversion vs. Introversion, Neuroticism vs. Stability and Psychoticism vs. Socialisation Wikipedia article.

Honey and Mumford’s (1982) Learning Style Questionnaire (LSQ) identifies four learning styles: Activists jump into the problem at hand. “They revel in short-term crisis fire fighting,” as Furnham puts it. Reflectors are careful and methodical; they prefer to stand back and analyze everything carefully before they act. Theorists tend to synthesize the facts they observe into coherent theories. And Pragmatists want what they learn to be practical and applicable, preferably immediately.

Whetten and Cameron’s (1984) Cognitive Style Instrument (CSI) considers the learning styles form a slightly different angle than LSQ, by analyzing how people: gather information (perceptive vs. receptive), evaluate information (systematic vs. initiative) and respond to information (active vs. reflective). The last parameter is the most interesting in this case. It describes whether people act on the information quickly (active) or prefer to reflect on it before taking action (reflective).

Sternberg and Wagner (1992) Thinking Styles Inventory (TSI) asks 65 questions to classify people into one of 13 learning styles. Two of them are external and internal; people who think externally are eager to use their knowledge to interact with people, and those who think internally prefer to work independently.

Short-Version Self-Directed Search (SVSDS) assesses personality types across 6 scales, one of which is social.

REFERENCES:

(1) Furnham A. Personality and Learning Style - a Study of 3 Instruments. Personality and Individual Differences 1992 APR;13(4):429-438.

(2) Jackson C, LawtyJones M. Explaining the overlap between personality and learning style. Personality and Individual Differences 1996 MAR;20(3):293-300.

(3) Zhang LF. Thinking styles and personality types revisited. Personality and Individual Differences 2001 OCT 15;31(6):883-894.

(4) Furnham A. The FIRO-B, the learning style questionnaire, and the five-factor model. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 1996 JUN;11(2):285-299.

(5) Furnham A, Jackson CJ, Miller T. Personality, learning style and work performance. Personality and Individual Differences 1999 DEC;27(6):1113-1122.

(6) Suda W, Fouts G. Effects of Peer Presence on Helping in Introverted and Extroverted Children. Child Dev 1980;51(4):1272-1275.

(Disclaimer: Nothing I say here should be construed as speaking for NASA. These are strictly my personal thoughts. All technical information written here is in the public domain.)

In my job as a spacecraft engineer, most of my time is spent designing and testing the systems that control spacecraft pointing and propulsion. However, those of us who design the pointing system generally need to be on-hand for launching a new spacecraft and establishing a stable attitude. So, I have helped operate a couple of spacecraft in their first few months (the first was WMAP, and the most recent was SDO, the Solar Dynamics Observatory).

Leading up to launch, it is customary to do a lot of simulations, especially of potential failures. The simulations sometimes go badly, with things really getting screwed up. But practicing until everyone is bored with simulations seems a key to a successful launch team.

On the actual launch day, the adrenaline level is weird. You have taken all these actions before in sims, yet you know it's quite likely to have no failures, but that it's more important this time that you catch any failures early.

Frankly, I love it. It's one of my favorite things about my job. Here are three things that I know have helped me be comfortable in high-tension situations:

I'm the oldest of three close brothers. We were a team so often as kids, with me the leader, that it feels natural to take control. (My friends in high school used to call me "O Imperious One" when I got too bossy.)

I played sports (badly) at an early age. Sport combines a need for quick reactions with physical exertion. By wearing myself out and still needing to perform, I think it helps me ignore the adrenaline. Then, I took that knowledge of my body's responses to stress to other situations.

I have performed music in front of audiences since I was a little kid. In performances, something can always go wrong. You rehearse and rehearse, but you still keep in mind that you have to react to unexpected events. I'm a decent but not great singer. The one time I got a choral solo in college was my final year. I did fine in rehearsal, but in the performance, my voice cracked horribly on the first note (the song was the Russian "Kalinka"). getting the error out of the way early let me calm down and focus on performing like I rehearsed. By the end, I was doing great and got some really nice applause (audiences love a recovered failure even more than a perfect performance).

So, that's my experience with what you're talking about. Great post!

Probably the most dangerous thing about college education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract arguments inside my head instead of simply paying attention to what's going on right in front of me. Paying attention to what's going on inside me. As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head. Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal-arts cliché about "teaching you how to think" is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: "Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.

-David Foster Wallace, commencement speech given to 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College.

Some people, not necessarily the same people who can ace tests without studying or learn math easily or even do well in sports, are still naturally good at responding to real-life, real-time events. They can manage their stress, make decision on the spot, communicate flexibly, and even have fun while doing it.

We call them "winners".

I think a similar thing happens in dancing. I've taken hundreds of dance lessons, in most styles of dance, over a period of ten years. I still can't go out onto the dance floor and dance. I've probably taken 200 salsa lessons; and at salsa lessons, I routinely have to ask people who started a few months ago for help. I literally can't perceive what the instructor is doing. Visually, I can see everything in fine detail; but if you asked me what they did, whether they spun left or right, or the man held the woman's left hand with his right or her right with his left, I couldn't say. It happens at a speed far above what my brain is able to process. Many instructors refuse to believe this, and will not demonstrate a movement at half-speed because they think it's wasting time. Instructors usually teach as long a sequence as they can in a lesson, guaranteeing that I won't remember any of it. They teach what a person can learn to mimic in one lesson, and don't understand that that's far beyond what a person can learn and remember in one lesson. In fact, after taking lessons from maybe 2 dozen different dance instructors, I would say that being a great dancer almost guarantees someone will make a lousy instructor. (A shout out to Michael Rye of Dance Bethesda, who is the best dance instructor I've had.)

When I tell people I have difficulty dancing, they always assume it's because I lack coordination or rhythm. In fact I have decent coordination and outstanding rhythm (though I have difficulty spelling it). But in dancing salsa, the man needs to keep in his head a list of about 100 different moves or short sequences, and every 4 seconds, he needs to review what he's just done and choose a new one that fits the previous sequence but isn't mere duplication of it. It takes the average man about 10 lessons to surpass me in salsa.

I had similar difficulties in martial arts, which I also studied for about 10 years. I did well in fights, because I only needed a set of about 10 precondition-attack combos to fight at the sub-blackbelt level where people don't get a chance to study their upcoming opponents. But I could never learn the kata (ritualized, pointless dance-like routines that are part of the belt exams), so I gave up advancing. And karate in particular was never fun for me - it was always stressful; I generally dreaded going, a feeling which just got worse and worse over time.

This is a reason why I'm skeptical that pickup can be taught to everyone. It's a skill that relies on deeply-embedded personality traits that might not be changeable. There can be many people who lack the skill but have the necessary traits, and they can learn. People who lack the skill and the traits, and fail to learn, are dismissed as not trying.

I strongly agree that this type of dynamic intelligence can be enhanced through training.

When humans are placed in a stressful situation for the first time, this is usually what happens by default:

1. Human enters stressful situation.
2. Human experiences a physiological stress response, e.g. sweating, stuttering.
3. Human says, "I am freaking out," and loses all confidence in their ability to perform.
4. Loss of confidence leads to decreasing performance, a vicious cycle of failure is entered upon.

With practice / experience, a human can retrain themselves toward:

1. Human enters stressful situation.
2. Human experiences a physiological stress response, e.g. sweating, stuttering.
3. Human says, "I notice that I am experiencing a normal stress response. This is alright, and I will not let it affect my performance."
4. Human performs well, and enters a cycle of increasing confidence.

For me, this is a hard-won observation. For example, there is a tendency to assume that some people are born "good public speakers." I think it is more likely that there are simply people who are better at noticing their own physiological nervousness for what it is, and maintaining their mental composure despite it.

From my own subjective experience, once this ability is gained in one situational domain, it at least partially translates to other domains.

I suspect a large part of the ability to deal with stressful situations relies on pre-established cognitive shortcuts that free up more of the brain for flexible analysis. One part of this I imagine involves what psychologists call "chunking", the ability to fit large data sets into the mind by unifying disparate data points into unified chunks.

Chess grandmasters, for example, can memorise the complete positions of twenty or more chess boards and play them out blindfolded, as long as the board positions are sensical and distinct, and they do so by remembering the board as chunks of interrelated data. They do not remember the position of each piece individually, but rather they remember clusters of pieces that are interacting: "this knight threatened by that bishop, who is near those pawns, who are protecting the queen from the rook" is a cluster and is remembered as such.

I suspect that those who practice dealing with specific stressful situations use such mental constructions to model the situation using less of their brain's processing time, freeing up more run-time for observation and prediction. So part one of dealing with stressful situations might be practising them until you can "chunk" them.

I also suspect that a large part of it is simple habituation to stressful stimuli and the human body's stress responses.

In my own experience doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu, when I first started wrestling other people 90% of my mind was taken up with being distressed because someone was sitting on me trying to put me in an unpleasant submission hold, 9% was trying and failing to remember any of the moves I had been taught and 1% at most was analysing the situation dispassionately. Over the course of four years or so that changed to the point where almost none of my mind was taken up with distress, I had a ready move for most situations and in some cases a library to choose from, and my opponent's exact position and intentions were "chunked" from relatively small amounts of data. This freed up most of my brain for strategic thinking, positional awareness of other wrestling pairs nearby on the mat and mentally rehearsing whatever new moves I was trying to functionalise.

So as far as shortcuts go all I can offer is an anti-shortcut. Spend years deliberately putting yourself in a specific stressful situation, and you will become good at handling that specific stressful situation. Possibly this habituation generalises to other stressful situations. I tend to avoid them so I have no data, and I don't think that I handle high-stress situations better than anybody else as a result of wrestling but I don't know for sure.

In a third and more nerd-specific vein, playing World of Warcraft in a group at a competent level largely boils down to simultaneously moving strategically to position yourself correctly in the game world while playing a rhythm game to activate your abilities in the optimum pattern. Doing these two tasks at once is non-trivial, and practise at the rhythm game element frees up more cognitive space for panning the camera around to maintain situational awareness, strategic thinking on the rare occasions when some kind of strategy is needed and deviating from the standard rhythm game pattern when it is optimal to activate some rarely-used button.

So practising relevant skills until "muscle memory" takes over also frees up more cognitive room for situational awareness and forward thinking.

Hypothesis: Practising isolated skills to build up "muscle memory" should help deal with stressful situations that use those skills to some extent. Habituating yourself to stress and distress should also help to some extent. Deliberate efforts to see the interrelationships between relevant stimuli to develop the ability to "chunk" data should also help to some extent. People who act effectively under stress are probably stress-habituated persons who have freed up a large part of their brain for situational awareness by automating or chunking the mental processes that take up most of the brain-space of neophytes in such situations.

My own experience learning fencing may illustrate some solutions. Fencing is not an "instinctive" sport. None of the motions feel natural, and if you try to rely on instinct, you almost invariably lose. You literally have to outthink your opponent. Obviously, this isn't something you have a whole lot of time to do (most fights last significantly under 30 seconds), so you do have to develop that "ability to react" that you're talking about. Typically, beginning fencers will get so caught up in their own thoughts as they make a plan that they can't react to anything the other fencer does that is unexpected. They way this is typically overcome (at least with the groups I've worked with) is by developing the student's own aptitude, and simultaneously forcing them to adapt their thoughts to fit whatever is changing in the fight. In general, I think those two things are the best things to develop in order to get better at reacting.

1. Make sure you know what you are doing. Freaking out about it, or feeling like you are unsure of what to do slows you down and makes you hesitate. This doesn't sound like your problem, since you're apparently a competent nurse-in-training.

2. Learning, by experience, that in these situations the world changes frequently and rapidly, and when it does, you shouldn't try to hold onto your old plan or what it was that you were trying to do, but instead you should decide what to do now and do it. Experience is extremely important for this.

I loosely suspect this has to do with how you've conditioned your use of working memory and your amount of it. I've heard of a study where they found that some people with high IQ and high WM do poorly on standardized tests, because the situation narrowed and shrunk their WM temporarily. High IQ/low WMers did not appear to suffer this effect.

The analogy given was that you're used to working on a nice executive desk, and suddenly you have to do the same tasks but with a clipboard and sheet of paper. Whereas if you have low WM, you're already used to working with little space. In this crowd monitor size is probably a better analogy.

The chunking strategy puts more of your skills on autopilot, allowing you to do more higher level function rather than stalling out (see Sian Beilock's new book Choke). I don't really know what to think of those who are TOO open to stimuli, though.

As for my own experiences:

The most relevant situation I can think of is when I was in my first and only car accident. It was a two lane road, and in the opposite lane, a car was intending to turn left. Just before we would pass it that car was hit from behind and propelled into our car. Things went spinning; the car stopped. I was in the passenger seat and both my dad and I were dazed from the impact.

I had the strangest experience of being absolutely clear and focused - which I would kill to be able to activate at will, by the way. I was not able to move very fast, being slightly injured and whiplashed, and had lost my glasses. But my mind went clicking - even though I felt like I was moving through molasses, I saw smoke in the car and assessed it as dangerous to stay, roused my dad from semi-consciousness, unbuckled him and myself, pried open my door, got out and around and dragged my dad out to the opposite curb. Just no hesitation, one step after another, boom boom boom. This held for the rest of the day and allowed me to coordinate logistics before going off in the ambulance with my dad.

Like I said, strange, as if some 'alert and analytical' switch in my brain had been jammed for a few hours.

Hi swimmer, It sounds to me you are writing about the difference between mindfulness and concentration. In the practice of meditation one goal is to find balance between these two. Too much concentration and you stop being aware of the moment to moment experience, too little concentration and your mind flutters a.k.a "monkey mind". For some basics about mindfulness/meditation google "mindfulness in plain english".

According to that text both concentration and mindfulness can be learned. Mindfulness is the more difficult skill to master.

I'm considered to be a shy person, but I think whether I am slower at responding or not depends on the situation.

I am a much better communicator when I have time to think over my response and put it in writing. I have trouble getting a word in during large group conversations, because by the time I think of something I can add, someone else starts talking. Then the conversation shifts to a different topic, and what I was going to say is no longer relevant.

If I'm talking to a friend one on one I can respond quickly and the conversation flows well. Though occasionally there might be a pause, and I may wonder what to say next to keep the conversation going. But in a large group, I am slower to respond. Like when it comes to participating in class, I'm often too slow to raise my hand because I have an inner battle of negative thoughts and worries in my head urging me to keep my hand down. I think if I didn't have all those anxious thoughts and my heart wasn't beating like crazy, I'd be able to raise my hand a lot quicker. But still I don't know if I'd be able to respond faster than those who just yell out the answer or shoot their hand up immediately.

I wouldn't say that I'm very bad at reacting though like #4 speculates, it just depends on the situation and the type of reaction we're talking about. I have very good reaction time when it comes to physical things like playing tennis and other sports, video games, etc. But when it comes to reacting orally in a larger group, I'd say I'm much slower because I have so many thoughts and worries in my head that keep me from speaking right away. Plus I like to think over my response very carefully, sometimes down to the very words I want to say.

March should be an interesting month for me though, because my goal for March is to participate in class. I've hardly ever participated in class before because whenever I think about doing it my arm goes limp, my heart starts beating like crazy, and my palms get a little sweaty. And of course all the worries and thoughts come rushing in my head. But I'm really going to try and raise my hand as much as I can. Maybe if I just don't think so much about what I'm doing it will be easier? I'll find out I guess. I'll be posting about it here:

http://theshynessproject.wordpress.com/

Some personal observations:

Reacting and Thinking are definitely two separate mental modes for me. I can do both fine, but I prefer not to mix the two. When I'm in the thinking mode, I cringe when I have to react on stuff like email or errands or coworkers' requests. When I'm in the reacting mode, I tend to avoid thinking-type problems that require uninterrupted time.

I often face this distinction at work. I'm a lead developer (not a coder) and, simultaneously, a project manager of a relatively large software project, so I often have thinking-type stretches of work (say, designing a major feature or subsystem for the next version of the software) followed by reacting-type periods when I oversee the implementation. Mixing the two kinds of work is painful for me, so I always try to separate them.

For thinking-mode periods, I prefer to shield myself from interruptions. For reacting-mode periods, I make myself open for interruptions, and even actively seek them.

Switching between the modes takes time, usually several days.

As for safely training oneself to react to external circumstances in real time: I definitely think that competitive / team-based first person shooters might be beneficial here, based on my experience with Team Fortress 2.

In high school, I was on the Academic Decathlon team. One of the activities we had to do were impromptu speeches - you would get one minute to choose one of three prompts and prepare a small speech, and then two minutes to deliver it. Practicing for that event was awesome, and my ability to react in that domain clearly climbed over the months of practice.

It didn't seem to transfer to my prepared speech. I was more nervous delivering that, because I hadn't had as much practice on simply recalling text with the specific distraction of judges, and because I was much more aware of the cost of a mistake in delivery. I can't say if the impromptu practice carried over to any other domains, but I didn't notice if it did.

In college, the closest thing I did was post on forums. I used to post ideas as I thought of them, write "speed" comments and check them later. I did this less as everyone on my forums became better writers and thinkers, and the cost of fast writing went up. Disturbingly, I have seen my ability to react decrease across all domains. So the skill has faded. But it can be trained, at least in some single domain!

I have also had the experience you relate, but from the opposite side. I volunteer as a peer counselor. From time to time our training involves practicing with other volunteers. One of us pretends to be the client and we practice our skills. I love doing it and I had no idea that half the volunteers hate it.

I wouldn't actually link it to introversion/extroversion. I am shy, especially in groups where I am unfamiliar with the appropriate way to behave. Even when I feel like I am participating often I find that I am not, such as in seminars. I need to know most of the people in order to speak. But if I'm given a role to play that goes away. As soon as I know how to make sense of my role in the group I can interact. That's why I love simulation, because I don't have to be me. I can pretend to be a certain kind of person, the kind of person who would be function well in this situation.

I would say playing is the best thing you can do. Play with ideas, ways of behaving, etc. Improvise. Join a free style dance like swing without a regimented set of moves.

I observe that people fast at reacting are generally fast. They walk fast, talk fast, learn fast (when the material isn't intellectually demanding). According to the reigning Cattell-Horn-Carroll model of cognitive abilities, the capacity determining these traits is represented by a factor--referred to as speed in simple operations, cognitive speed, or g sub s. This capacity is only weakly correlated with fluid intelligence, but it isn't substantially modifiable. I don't think it corresponds to any part of brain anatomy; perhaps is more an anlage function representing some parameter of neural function.

I have also noticed this ability-to-react for several years. I am definitely good at it. Unfortunately, I cannot offer any advice on developing the skill, but I do have some observations:

-I tend to get nervous after doing something. For instance, when presenting to a large group, I feel completely calm. Afterward, however, I often start shaking as I go over it in my head.

-Regarding public speaking, I don't generally need to write out what I'm going to say, but I do need to think it out in advance. Usually, I have a 5-10 line summary for a 10 minute presentation. Otherwise, I ramble.

-This skill is especially useful in dancing. I dance blues, salsa, and some swing socially. I almost never plan out moves; dance partners have asked me many times what that cool move was, and I have no idea. Apparently this is very unusual. The flip side is that I cannot dance pre-choreographed moves at all. Usually I forget the sequence within 3 measures and just do something else.

-I also love simulations like those you mentioned. We used to do emergency simulations in the Scouts, and I felt very in-my-element. I just go into this alert problem-solving mode and everything seems to flow smoothly. It feels great.

Two hypotheses:

• Is this skill related to left/right brain dominance? I believe my ability-to-act is unusually good, and I know that I am extremely right brained. Intuitively, this ability-to-act sounds like a right-brain skill. Any other observations for/against this hypothesis?

• I would bet money under long odds that this skill correlates closely with parallel thinking. Parallel thinking is the ability to consider multiple approaches to a problem simultaneously; I do it constantly. If you've ever looked at a problem,immediately seen three ways of doing it, estimated the difficulty of each, and gone with the best, that's parallel thinking. When I'm in ability-to-act mode, it becomes a subconscious process. Any one else want to submit evidence for or against for this one?

For a while I've been trying to read around topics that seem related to highly effective behavior with an eye towards figuring out which data structures and algorithms might implement it successfully.

I'm not sure how much the construct you're calling "ability-to-react" actually exists as a coherent thing but you might find a pre-existing vocabulary you can point to by reading around subjects like: flow (the mental state of being absorbed in successful coping), tacit knowledge (the tricky to describe skills frequently deployed when coping), situational awareness (required to notice terrible things while there's still time to do something about them), and maybe stress (to drill into the physiology triggered by crazy situations).

For a less academically stuffy exemplar who embodies the whole package, maybe check out the grizzled veteran :-)

I most often hear it referred to as "thinking on your feet," which is admittedly not noticeably more felicitous than "ability to react."

If you haven't read Gladwell's Blink, you might find it interesting.

You might also find extemporaneous speaking and improv theatre a useful way to improve at this.

One of my first thoughts, on starting to consider this situation, was how higher levels of expertise (in the Dreyfus sense) relate to this. I wouldn't consider myself, in general, someone who has good/fast reactive abilities, but in my areas of expertise I often work quite comfortably even under pressure because I simply "do what I do," and don't need to think about it too much. However, when someone at a lesser level of expertise demands justification for my proposals, I typically cannot quickly come up with a good argument; it's generally hours or even days later I can formulate an explanation of why my proposed approach to the problem is a good one.

I'm not sure if the Dreyfus brothers have been discussed here before (it would seem likely, given my impression of the type of people here, but I'm new), but, given the field of the original poster, this is certainly an appropriate place to mention again Patricia Benner's From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice, as well as mention that this has been one of the most influential books I've read on my career as a software developer and sysadmin.

I also have anecdotal evidence that this ability to ACT is acquired with practice. My observations are from martial arts, where it seems that this skill is somewhat orthogonal to technical ability or power.

I'm pretty good at thinking when things go bad, but I have had a lot more practice than most people.

This is because 1) sorta enjoy it, 2) I want to be able to react well when its more serious, so I try to do things that might put me into these types of situations (as long as it wont kill me/permanently disable me to mess up). For example, I'll purposely fishtail the car pulling onto an empty road, and I crash my bike every year (and narrowly avoid about a half dozen more).

I'm pretty sure you'd put me in your 'quick to react' category. I'm the person who remains calm in stressful situations and figures out what to do. I don't think it's a matter of shutting off my internal monologue (my internal monologue never shuts off) but of redirecting it. I tend to be fairly good at thinking about what I want to be thinking about. Useful in a crisis, really bad when I'm procrastinating.

I also tend to be really good at connecting and remembering information, and at taking tests, though, so I'm not sure that the skills are in opposition. I suspect that thinking on your feet and being able to retain and synthesize information are separate skills, but much more effective when put together.

Posting this before reading the comments to give a summary/response based on my own internal experiences. Quick note: I'm extremely good at internalizing/manipulating information, and about proficient at "reacting". It might also be worth noting sex (I'm male), since I could definitely see these kinds of thought processes being different on the two standard systems.

This analysis is definitely subject to the "generalizing from one example" problem, considering some large differences between the thought mechanisms you mention and my own. One telling example is the programming/reacting analogy: when programming(and writing, after the first stage of composition) I have this tendency to "hold the whole program in my head" as I've heard it called, and in doing so I don't use an internal monologue at all. In fact, when I'm solving most problems(math, spatial manipulations, logic puzzles) in my mind, my internal monologue is silent, and rather I'm working silently in my headspace- my reasoning methods feel spatial, rather than verbal. When working in a group (cooking is the closest example of "reacting" that I can relate to in terms of necessitated efficiency/urgency) the monologue is still silent and I'm solving problems through psuedospatial manipulation; the significantly smaller amount of problem solving necessary does tend to allow the problem/solution to just remain static in my head for most of the time though while I engage in physical tasks, rather than actively solving it. This for me, leads to a sense that very little focus is used while reacting; some tasks (mincing garlic, dicing onions(crying makes it harder), &c.) however may require close attention, if physically complicated, and this might be the other kind of focus you mention. I can, overall, add another confirming data point to the "silencing your internal monologue is helpful/necessary for reacting properly" hypothesis though.

I also have some possible suggestions, though mileage will likely vary very extremely:

silencing ones internal monologue can be aided by meditation- in fact, they are practically equivalent- so the initial meditation exercises, to "clear ones mind" may prove useful in getting used to doing this, and possibly make it easier.

there's no need to practice silencing your internal monologue only while "reacting"-try doing it during everyday tasks where intense thought isn't necessary(eg brushing your teeth), and it might become that much easier.

if your brain works like mine, you may be able to delegate certain tasks to parts of your mind not directly linked to what you consider "you" (one notably common example is how sometimes you realize the solution to a problem you were working on a while ago but not actively thinking about), and if you can get good at this, it works better(for me) than memorizing responses- just let yourself respond on automatic.

I've noticed this and in my case it's more a matter of mindset than anything else. My day job consists of programming, and at night I do public speaking.

I find it takes me longer to get into a flow state when doing public speaking. I think the terms sometimes used are "up time" and "down time".

Practice definitely helps. I've taken improvisational acting classes and those were slightly helpful. I've learned to recognize when I feel I'm inside my own head. It feels like you know how you want to come across but actually speaking doesn't come out how you expect and you start focusing inward. The only way through it is to keep pushing yourself. Overload your senses by speaking through the situation and then volunteer to do more immediately after.

I've also found that being in a social situation when I'm internally focused will lead to fatigue, but if I take an active lead, then I get revitalized quickly.

This ties a couple of things together. Normally, when a person is celebrated for being a hero, they back off from the acclaim and say something like, "I just did what was necessary ".

Your piece implies that this reaction is useful to protect the ability to handle stress-- thinking about how heroic one is or ought to be is not the right place to put one's attention.

In addition, all the cultural stuff about wondering whether one is the right sort of person to do something heroic makes it less likely that people will react well under stress.

All this is what I've picked up from reasonably modern America-- if heroism is thought of differently in other cultures (I think there have been some where boasting was more acceptable), let me know.

Moridinamael is right about self-confidence, it is really important in fast reacting, even more than practice.

When I joined the military as a private in Russian army my performance during certain stressfull tasks was significantly lower during approximately first six months. As time passed, sertain situations became less stressfull, and I became to outperform lots of my peers as I gained more self-confidence and was finally able to think clear and fast.

(Practice is most essential in ability to react fast and cooperatively. To effectively cooperatively react you need to make one decision of most importance whether you are taking charge of things or you are going to follow someone else's initiative in the next minutes. I think this is the essence of effective cooperative reaction is small groups. But thats another topic.)

Couple of time has passed, army days are long gone and now I know that I had some serious troubles with my self-confidence during some stressfull situations in my life, even the ones that had repeated again and again. Final change came when my wife had left me, I loved her so much that most of my world evolved around her. And now I have virtually nothing to lose, this event severely increased my performance in tasks which require self-confidence.

P.S. I think you might be interested in reading something about OODA loop.

In your third speculation, I think the first and second category have got swapped round.

I'm considered to be a shy person, but I think whether I am slower at responding or not depends on the situation.

I am a much better communicator when I have time to think over my response and put it in writing. I have trouble getting a word in during large group conversations, because by the time I think of something I can add, someone else starts talking. Then the conversation shifts to a different topic, and what I was going to say is no longer relevant.

If I'm talking to a friend one on one I can respond quickly and the conversation flows well. Though occasionally there might be a pause, and I may wonder what to say next to keep the conversation going. But in a large group, I am slower to respond. Like when it comes to participating in class, I'm often too slow to raise my hand because I have an inner battle of negative thoughts and worries in my head urging me to keep my hand down. I think if I didn't have all those anxious thoughts and my heart wasn't beating like crazy, I'd be able to raise my hand a lot quicker. But still I don't know if I'd be able to respond faster than those who just yell out the answer or shoot their hand up immediately.

I wouldn't say that I'm very bad at reacting though like #4 speculates, it just depends on the situation and the type of reaction we're talking about. I have very good reaction time when it comes to physical things like playing tennis and other sports, video games, etc. But when it comes to reacting orally in a larger group, I'd say I'm much slower because I have so many thoughts and worries in my head that keep me from speaking right away. Plus I like to think over my response very carefully, sometimes down to the very words I want to say.

March should be an interesting month for me though, because my goal for March is to participate in class. I've hardly ever participated in class before because whenever I think about doing it my arm goes limp, my heart starts beating like crazy, and my palms get a little sweaty. And of course all the worries and thoughts come rushing in my head. But I'm really going to try and raise my hand as much as I can. Maybe if I just don't think so much about what I'm doing it will be easier? I'll find out I guess. I'll be posting about it here: http://theshynessproject.wordpress.com/

Complete agreement; I'm in exactly the same boat.

One thing I've noticed is that high-speed action-reaction iterations seem beyond my grasp to truly master; one example is tracking objects with mouse movements in video games; I am exceptional compared to most humans, but among other highly-trained gamers, I seem to be a poor performer - even though my tested reflex speed is normal. This makes me a great general and a poor soldier. Any other good-analysis-bad-reaction minds care to weigh in on this? I'm curious if there's a connection.

My experience with this feels more like going deeper and deeper into a particular mental state, where context switches out of that state break all of my abilities to pieces. The beginning of a book is harder than the middle or end of a book, because after a while I've picked up all the proper contexts and loaded them into memory. After reading a book of poetry, I can think and dream in poems. But switch the context too harshly, say, in the middle of a deep concentration task, and my brain is thrown for loops, has no idea where it is, and refuses to come up with a single action or word.

It feels almost like I'm wearing a groove into my neurons, a tightened pathway of everything aligned just right to handle a particular task, and then suddenly I get pushed out of the fast lane and into a ditch.

Fantastic post.

I'm not 100% sure but I think what you describe is typical for people who have Asperger syndrome.

I vividly remember allowing a pigeon to die due to not acting quickly enough, and I've always been bad at social interaction with people I didn't know well, but I was also rather good at high school basketball and multiplayer FPS video games. Thus it seems that domain-specific perception of self-competence might be important, and that patterns of slow reaction might be self-perpetuating (compounded by actual lack of competence),