Subliminal Accidental Operant Conditioning

Copyright 2003 -  Edited 03/16/2008

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If you want to see the power of this phenomenon,

 remember the paranoid psychotic rant of Seng-Hui Cho.

The Virginia Tech shooter had created the "special circumstances" for exposure.

When he had the expected mental event, he planned then killed 32 people.

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This page is the first draft of an explanation of Accidental Operant Conditioning.

A conflict of physiology was discovered when knowledge workers began having mental breaks.

The Cubicle solved that problem but the phenomenon is unknown outside the designers and manufacturers of office furniture, Systems Furniture.

Exposure from Subliminal Distraction is proposed as the cause of most mental disorders.

Disorders caused by drug use, birth defects, or brain  injury are not included. 

If you want to see the power of this phenomenon remember the paranoid psychotic rant of Seng-Hui Cho.

The Virginia Tech shooter had created the "special circumstances" for exposure.

When he had the expected mental event, he planned then killed 32 people.

Scroll down one screen or click this line to skip site links.

This site is about a conflict of human physiology that shaped history but was undetected  until the 1960's.

In the entire history of man on the planet Earth this phenomenon was discovered only once.

It caused mental breaks for office workers.

You will find this material hard to believe.

This phenomenon is explained in first semester psychology lectures where students don't believe it either.

For that reason I wrote a demonstration that will allow you to experience the phenomenon.

The Everquest Connection page has the explanation and assumes you have not taken basic psychology.

The solution for this problem was the office Cubicle.

This site argues that the this phenomenon causes College Suicides and Missing Students.

The phenomenon causes mental events around the world, Chaco Canyon.

If you use computers in unprotected workspace such as homes, dorms, student apartments, and small business offices read  ...Prevention... at the bottom of most pages.

Long  term exposure can cause severely altered mental states. Qi Gong  Kundalini Yoga

If you are visiting the site as part of a school project send the person responsible for controlling violence at your school to this site.

Introduction

You will not find the subject of this page anywhere else on the Internet. Why?  Because the conflict of physiology that allows it to happen is unknown in the mental health field.

A small portion of your vision field operates subliminally to detect movement approaching from behind. When 'threat movement' is detected your brain creates a reflex. The reflex is to turn and look to identify the movement. If you have been startled or 'caught something out of the corner of your eye' that is the brain system  that causes this problem at work.

Humans developed, evolved, from hunter gathers. The reflex is a warn first identify second system. There is no memory and no thought, reasoning, associated with this reflex. Remember the last time you were startled? It happened so fast there was no time to think and evaluate before the reflex happened.

We have the ability to ignore vision reflexes once we identify the movement as harmless. But when we do the connection to consciousness is lost. The subliminal functioning of the system prevents your conscious mind from re-acquiring the movement. But the system continues to function detecting threat movement and attempting to force the normal reflex.

If we had the ability to turn that system off it would have been of little use to hunter gathers. This is a simple system. The fact that we can't stop it functioning but can ignore it, is a conflict in our physiology. This was not a problem for roving hunter gathers and pre-humans.

But as humans began to make tools and produce items for trade the stationary posture required to do that sets up the first element of the template for this phenomenon.

This problem was discovered when Knowledge workers using the first close-spaced office workstations began having mental breaks. The problem was solved and the office Cubicle is designed to block side vision so that workers cannot subliminally detect movement in the room. Everything on either side of a Knowledge worker in a Cubicle is stationary.

(That is called Cubicle Level Protection. A cubicle is not necessary to achieve that level of protection. Some Cubicle designs have lower levels of protection due to the use of semi-opaque panels and low wall heights. The level of expected repeating detectable movement determines how designs are implemented. The job description too effects the designs used. Receptionists don't need full Cubicle Level Protection but engineers and accountants would. A private office where there is no through-traffic or other movement is full Cubicle Level Protection.) The Modern Cubicle

But this is a problem of physiology not desks, chairs, and filing cabinets. The phenomenon can happen anywhere the conditions exist to cause it.

This phenomenon explains mental illness through the ages. That is one of the problems modern science has experienced in attempting to solve the cause of mental illness. Psychotic mental illness has happened throughout history. This was ,of course, before modern stress, depression, and chemical pollutants were created.

This phenomenon explains how/why mental illness has always been in every human population.

The Phenomenon

Although your conscious mind is unaware of the repeated attempts to break your concentration the stimulus to create the reflex is still being received subconsciously.

How do I know this? From observation of the effect on my wife and psychology lectures in the 1990's. I know what happened to cause my wife's mental break. I began searching for the problem but discovered it is not mentioned anywhere. I first encountered it as an engineering student forty years ago.

As I searched I found other activities that had psychotic mental breaks associated with them; Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga. When you investigate these they involve eyes-open concentration. To maintain that concentration the participant must ignore everything happening around them. That is the same mental involvement Knowledge workers must use to be able to perform their duties at work. When the exercises are done in groups each person can subliminally detect movement from others exercising near them. Qi Gong ---- Kundalini Yoga

In the business office situation it is believed that only massive exposure will create the mental break. In addition those early episodes resolved with no treatment. They were probably called pseudo psychosis in that time period, 1950's and 1960's.

In a second phase of investigation I  began to look at situations where someone was required to sit for hours in the same unprotected design situation: classrooms. Are there mental events associated with children in classrooms? Why yes their are! ADD and ADHD are directly associated with classrooms.

Schizophrenia follows the  time line of exposure in classrooms but no one has associated it with this phenomenon and exposure.

1___

Accidental Operant Conditioning

Although there have been hints that some disorders in the DSM are connected because they happen co-morbidly with other disorders too frequently to be random chance, that connection has not been discovered.

The DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness, of the American Psychiatric Association, lists and categorizes disorders as mood or psychotic then groups them as distinct behaviors. They are further ranked according to the length of the acute phase.

How can the vastly different symptoms be connected?

They can be connected if operant conditioning reinforced contemporaneous thought, activity, and concerns to create the delusions and psychotic behavior.

Your brain functions by receiving neural impulses from known sources and integrating them into your conscious reality. When a single startle happens there is no time for the brain to learn about it. But if it repeats hour after hour your brain eventually attempts to use the input correctly. In attempting to learn how to use the subliminal input mistakes and incorrect associations are made. When enough of them exist your brain no longer functions and you have a dissociative mental break. When the stimulus stops the incorrect connections dissolve from disuse.

In Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga the stimulus happens during the short  time of the exercise session a few  times each week. That rate of stimulus allows the brain to slowly create the incorrect connections so that they are strengthened through repeated use. Incorrect reasoning and psychotic mental states happen. (You are free to rephrase this idea any way you wish.)

The beliefs created follow the instruction of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga. That could be said to be an organized exposure. When someone is exposed in a random manner there is no instruction accompanying the exposure. That is a disorganized exposure. The worries, fears, and contemporaneous activities are reinforced to create schizophrenia.

My theory, offered here, is that the constant attempts to force a reflex is "stimulation of the subconscious." There is no reason to believe that signals to effect a peripheral vision reflex have complex meanings. Rather, each person associates, incorrectly identifies, the subliminal input as reinforcement of their thoughts.

Remember the word "Subliminal?" That means that the victim experiences this as part of their normal thought process and stream of consciousness. They are unaware they are receiving input or that anything is happening to them.

When that subliminal input is incorrectly associated with contemporaneous thought, operant conditioning has occurred. Note the difference from the classical definition of operant conditioning. There is no conditioned stimulus or response. The stimulus is accidentally created by exposure to the phenomenon. Each outcome is different rather than the planned response described in classical operant conditioning.

Paranoia and un-attributed fear are the only common outcomes.

Paranoia is one of the most common outcomes of mental illness but no one has proposed a definitive cause. The fact that peripheral vision reflexes are created when threat movement is detected approaching from  behind can explain paranoia. Paranoia is the eventual outcome derived from a feeling of being watched or of something being behind you.

There are other explanations for paranoia. If the neural impulses generated by the detection of movement in peripheral vision and the efforts of you brain to force a startle and vision reflex stimulate portions of the brain that hold our memories of fear, the outcome would be the same. The repeating subliminal or  subconscious appreciation of threat or fear would eventually color thought and reason.

Exposure and the stimulus to cause a vision reflex is the same for everyone. But each person experiences exposure in terms of their belief system, ethnic, and cultural values. Culture Bound Syndromes

If someone is  involved in a dispute that dispute is reinforced and enlarged until violence is a reasonable action in the mind of the victim. (Paranoia plays a large part in this scenario.)

If a student is worried because of a failing grades that situation will be reinforced by exposure until despondency is created and suicide becomes reasonable choice in a delusional mental state. Colleges have been unable to stop sudden out-of-the-blue suicides.

Gay students are reported as having the highest suicide rates of all college students. Exposure to the phenomenon would raise the confusion and  worry  through the experience of a gay student so that suicide becomes a strong possibility for them.  College Suicides

A young woman who worries about her appearance related to weight and is also exposed to this phenomenon would have that concern raised to psychotic levels. Anorexia and Bulimia is rampant on college campuses. Incorrect design of dorm rooms and too-close spacing in classrooms would provide exposure to the phenomenon.

Other College Mental events

Unknown to most of the general public is a problem of students who suddenly disappear. Violence and kidnapping are usually believed to be the cause. But one was sighted in other country in an altered mental state. Another, Ahmad Arain, recovered and emailed home. He was taken in by a Spanish speaking family when they found him wandering in Mexico. He too was in an altered mental state.

In Maura Murray's case she had some type mental event at work. She worked at a security desk at college. Within a few days she had wrecked two cars leaving the second one disabled. She walked away and has not been seen since.  Missing Students

There is a story of a group of these disappearances posted by the Library at Miami of Ohio. Students would disappear recover and return but have amnesia of events during that disappearance. The psychology department  there called it a "Case of Amnesia." Ron Tammen disappeared and it was later discovered he had approached a house to ask about a non-existent bus stop. He didn't know his own name and was too lightly dressed for the cold night. There was snow on the ground. He has been missing over fifty years. Links are on the Mysterious Disappearances and Missing Students pages.

My Cause of Psychotic Mental Illness page has links to studies that inadvertently make the connection to this phenomenon.  None of the studies mention the phenomenon but their data supports this conclusion when you understand the problem and how it works.

What Causes the Psychotic States?

The current state of the art is that no one knows.

Experts who do not agree with the current theory of chemical imbalances point out that spontaneous recovery was a normal feature of mental illness in the past. Most victims were expected to recover with rest and that did happen. Removal of the person from the source of exposure would have that effect.

Why are some effected but not others?

We all have exposure to this phenomenon every day. It is normal and  usually harmless.

The Qi Gong, Kundalini Yoga, and  business office experiences point to a high level of exposure in a compact time frame as the trigger for a psychotic or dissociative mental break.

With no memory associated in this phenomenon your brain cannot distinguish different sources of exposure. At the level in your brain where these reflexes are created, below thought, reason, and consciousness, it is all neural pulses on nerves and electro chemical exchanges between neurons. If the stimulus meets criterion the reflex happens.

The sources of threat movement can be strange. In the case of Tommy Stein, son of actor Ben Stein, it was a large fish in a tank he could reach out and touch with his right hand as he played Everquest. The Everquest Connection  An email from Ben Stein confirmed the tank contents after the 48Hours Investigates segment on Evercrack, Everquest Addiction.

If you have several episodes of exposure daily that could cause mental effects. If Panic Attacks and Mood Disorders are outcomes of exposure then a large number of people have this experience but don't reach the psychotic mental break.

One explanation of why some but not others are effected is that there is an inherited increased physical ability to detect movement in peripheral vision. This could be caused by the shape of the eye and the number of rods packed in far peripheral vision.

Physical attributes are inherited. If a family has a genetic trait that increases the possibility of exposure that would explain inherited mental illness.

Creativity, Intelligence, and Mental Illness

Creative persons and those with high intelligence are more likely to have jobs that would fill the template for exposure. Outdoor workers are immune unless they have a hobby or activity that fills the template of exposure. That template can involve computer use or any other craft activity that requires;

• Relatively stationary posture--(Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga are the exception),

• An activity that requires full mental investment and concentration,

• A source of repeating detectable movement sufficient to create a peripheral vision reflex.

Remember that this phenomenon was discovered long before personal computers existed.

Treatment

It is well known in literature that drug treatment is unsuccessful. Some success rates as low as twenty percent are cited. ECT is still the first line treatment. But even though ECT causes a remission, for some diagnoses the relapse rate is 100%. Some treatments centers are recommending maintenance ECT to be repeated at intervals until the subject refuses to continue. If you read the literature you are told that correct diagnosis and treatment is difficult. You are cautioned that you may have to see several doctors to find treatment.

If the cause of mental illness were correctly known that would not be true. What if your condition slowly resolves over the months of seeing doctor after doctor? You would believe that the last doctor found the problem and successfully treated you.

There are alternative treatments being offered. The Veteran's Administration acknowledges that EMDR is useful. It is ridiculed as quackery.  Sites around the world have treatments varying from  Yoga, Qi Gong, Diet, Native American dance, and a host of others.  It may be that altering the behavior, accidentally diminishing exposure to Subliminal Distraction, allows a recovery. In that case any treatment that occupies time, thus reducing your exposure, would be beneficial

You should use your own judgment.

A Simpler Solution

I don't diagnose or suggest treatment. This site is information you can use or not. It will cost you nothing to search your daily activities seeking a source and place of exposure. You do not have to stop other treatment to investigate this. In fact some drugs have serious consequences if you suddenly stop taking them.

There will not be an immediate result or cure if you find and stop exposure. This problem becomes a learned behavior. You must unlearn the operant conditioning.

But if you find that you do have exposure and change behaviors, you should eventually see a change.

The experience of hospital intensive care patients is that their psychotic episodes stop once they leave the ICU. ICU Psychosis

How do I know this? I had panic attacks. I did not understand them and when they stopped I still didn't understand. When I started writing the Panic Attacks page I remembered what I had done  to cause and to stop them.  

I  moved a computer workstation from the center of a room where it was a room divider to a corner position. The converging room walls prevented any family member walking by me from behind as I worked on the computer.

The Panic Attack Anxiety Disorder page is being written to test this theory.

http://www.vestibular.org/computer.html

10___

Alternate Explanation

There are areas of the brain which will produce fear or aggression when electrically stimulated. It is possible that the neural impulses which communicate signals to cause repeating peripheral vision reflexes slowly stimulate areas or brain features to produce paranoia and fear.

One of the difficulties is explaining why the same stimulus produces such diametrically opposed effects in different people.

In part the suggestion that operant conditioning is involved is supported by the investigation of Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disease. Although originally believed to be a neurological disorder associated with Tourette Syndrome, eventually it suggested that everything seen in the disorder could be explained by  operant conditioning.

The question that  arises with this second explanation of the cause of paranoia and fear associated with exposure to Subliminal Distraction is the same. Why does the same stimulus to effect a peripheral vision reflex cause fear and paranoia in one person and sudden berserk violence in another?

Links

Nightwalking

"In The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary swordsman of 16th century Japan, implies that he fought his greatest duels with his eyes crossed, and goes into considerable detail about developing and using this strange abitlity."

The method suggested to engage peripheral vision is to suspend an object from the bill of a baseball cap and practice staring at it rather than looking straight ahead as we all normally do.

The site has a page on the physiology of the eye and sight. It describes the normal field of vision.

http://www.navaching.com/hawkeen/nwalk.html#Anchor-The-59125

Institute for Innovative Blind Navigation

Don't let the site name put you off. This site has several pages which explain sight and how the brain deals with two vision systems.

http://www.wayfinding.net/index.htm

This page has the vision material.    http://www.wayfinding.net/vsionsys.htm#four

The Red Myth

Color in Vision

http://stlplaces.com/night_vision.html

University of Missouri

The first paragraph on this page refers to psychological factors effecting pupil dilation.

"Interestingly, the pupil/iris combination also changes in response to psychological factors. One sign of activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which is a system important in arousal, fight, and flight, is dilated pupils. For example, sexual interest results in pupil dilation. (This piece of information may come in handy some time.)"

http://web.umr.edu/~psyworld/eye.htm

 University of Utah

John Moran Eye Center --  Anatomy

http://webvision.med.utah.edu/

Kimball's Biology Pages 

A simple explanation of the eye and sight.

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/V/Vision.html

Understanding Human Vision

This site deals with color.

http://www.pitir.com/pentile/Human_Vision.html

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