Approved For Releas^gQQ>V/Og/07 sf )£^RDP96-00789R002200640001-7
General Article
ENHANCING HUMAN
PERFORMANCE:
An Evaluation of “New Age”
Techniques Considered by the
U.S. Army
by John A. Swets and Robert A. Bjork
I
Unconventional techniques considered by
the United States
?
Army for enhancing human performance were reviewed during
ii two-year study by a committee of the National Research
Council. Little or no scientific evidence was found to support
effectiveness of several, including neurolinguistic program-
in interpersonal influence and such paranormal
tech-
dques as remote viewing and psychokinesis. Mixed results
foreseen to characterize other techniques, for example, group-
fohesion procedures. Further study was suggested for a few,
toduding mental practice of motor skills. Guidelines requested
the committee for future army evaluation of enhancement
Uniques stressed the need for, and the conduct of, both lab-
jwvjfory and field research. The committee recommended fur-
1 fr consideration of mainstream research
in the behavioral
as a basis for effective performance enhancements^
|
^'Ve years ago the Army Research
Institute (ARI)
the National Research Council to assess a field of
j
|
Nues designed to enhance human performance. As
i
these techniques are extraordinary in that they
j (^
e developed outside of mainstream research in the
;
® avioral sciences and are accompanied by
strong
'
t^
ms for high effectiveness. The ARI wanted a commit-
i m
to examine the potential of certain
specified tech-
ij^es
> to recommend appropriate criteria for evaluating
j^
h techniques, and, where possible, to specify the re-
Uan
necessary to advance understanding of perfor-
\ pf0
Ce enhancements in areas of behavior related to the
'ioii
** techniques. In pursuing this line of investiga-
\ ^ ARI was reacting to broad and substantial ad-
tn the army of trying to gain large enhancements
.jtnan performance by any conceivable means.
!"'ore
earmy’ s interests, as summarized by ARI, included
'
efficient learning, improved motor
skills,
altered
j
correspondence and reprint requests to John A. Swets,
^,0
and Newman, Inc., 10 Moulton Street, Cambridge, MA
10 R°bert A. Bjork, Department of Psychology, University of
a
’ Los Angeles, CA 90024.
mental states,
stress reduction, interpersonal influence,
group cohesion, and
certain parapsychological
pro-
cesses. More specifically, the army was considering the
possibilities that learning could take place during sleep,
that learning might be accelerated via packaged programs
designed for that purpose, and that motor skills might be
enhanced by guided imagery, mental practice, visual con-
centration, and biofeedback. Further, it wished to pursue
the possibility that mental states could be altered by self-
induced hypnotism, meditation, focused concentration,
or the integration of activity in the brain’s hemispheres,
in order to promote periods of peak performance. The
army was also interested
in whether biofeedback and
methods that purport to alter mental states might be use-
ful in managing stress. Certain aspects of interpersonal
and group processes were under examination as well,
including whether group cohesion, which might be fos-
tered by keeping army units intact, enhances group and
individual performance. Finally, the army had an interest
in such parapsychological processes as remote viewing
and psychokinesis, or mind over matter, especially men-
tal influence on the functioning of remote machines.
J
t0 examine the potential of certain specified tech-
It may at first seem strange that anyone in the army
qu
k
es
- to recommend appropriate criteria for evaluating
was interested in the panoply of behavioral processes and
? techniques, and, where possible, to specify the re-
techniques that characterized the countercultural human-
*rch necessary to advance understanding of perfor-
potential movement of the 1960s. However, in the 1980s
>Ce enhancements in areas of behavior related to the
advocates of such techniques have had success with an
p0sed techniques
In pursuing this line of investiga-
approach that
is more entrepreneurial than ideological.
> ^ ARI was reacting to broad and substantial ad-
Moreover, the techniques are presented less as related to
!
in the army of trying to gain large enhancements
general well-being and more as related to specific tasks
| San performance by any conceivable means.
such
as marksmanship, second-language learning, and
iJhe
a
mvy’s interests, as summarized by ARI, included
sleep inducement. The army is not alone in this interest
6 e«icient learning
improved motor
skills,
altered
Private industry and the general public have also given
g ’
P
much attention to these New Age techniques in commer-
~
daily available programs of general training and self help.
i 5?' 1 Beiw,
corresP°ndence and reprint requests to John A. Swets,
army’ s interest in extending human abilities through
r,!^ or ml
a"d Newman, Inc. , 10 Moulton Street, Cambridge, MA
aDSVchological processes originated primarily in intel-
XiL
Robert A - Bjork, Department of Psychology, University of
pdrapsycnuiug.v-ai^—
.-A-,~
Kllt nara_
dUa
, Los Angeles CA 90024.
ligence circle s rather than in training circles, but para
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PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Enhancing Human Performance
psychology soon became a bedfellow of the unconven-
tional training techniques in the army.
FORMATION OF THE NRC COMMITTEE
In conversations between Edgar M. Johnson, techni
cal director of ARI, and David A. Goslin , then executive
director of the Commission on Behavioral and Social Sci-
ences and Education (CBASSE) of the NRC, and in a
formal letter request,
it was indicated that the ARI lead-
ership wanted help, not only to reduce broad pressures
on
it that had recently intensified, but also with an
1m-
nortant national problem of interest to private industry
snH the public as well as the military
. CBASSE members
imal education as well as short terms of duty, into
diers who possess the personal and social skills
.
}
battle as well as the technical skills needed to operate£
maintain complex equipment. It could understand uJ
to look beyond slow, narrow, and insufficiently targ^'
mainstream research on human performance to enha^
ments that could come from elsewhere. And it was
illVilVO
VJ
~
f
that those in the army responsible for training and
lllUi
v
B
nique evaluation would face difficulties in responding,
strong enhancement claims (both by army
officers
outside vendors) for diverse and far-ranging techniq^
The committee agreed that the general problem dese^
who evaluated this request included psychologists Wil-
liam K. Estes, Ira J. Hirsh, Lauren Resmck, and Stanley
Schachter. In response to the request, CBASSE moved
to
set up a committee especially for the purpose, with
suggestions for particular kinds of expertise also from
other advisers including psychologists Robert Boruch,
Wendell R. Garner, Bert F. Green, and Gardner Lindzey.
The first author of this article was enlisted as committee
chair and, together with Goslin, he developed the final
recommendations for membership that were endorsed by
the commission.
1 Daniel Druckman was appointed as the
committee’s study director.
The Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement
of Human Performance (henceforth, the committee) met
first in late July 1985. ARI’s Johnson along with George
Lawrence, its liaison to the committee, arranged for sev-
eral speakers
at the
first meeting, who informed and
sometimes perplexed the members. A few speakers de-
scribed
single techniques,
others waxed
enthusiastic
about the full range of them, and one, a retired general,
spoke eloquently of his own extensive psychokinetic
P° General Maxwell R. Thurman was the motivational
speaker at dinner the first evening. His graphs demon-
strated that in terms of recruits’ test scores, the army was
doing increasingly better, and also better compared to the
other services. His review of the traditional and growing
demands placed on soldiers, however, made clear that
these demands continued to outstrip abilities by a large
objective and thorough examination and was willi^
initiate such a study
Subcommittees were formed on various facets of^
problem, including evaluation issues, sleep learning,^
celerated learning, guided imagery, biofeedback, $p|
brain
effects,
stress management, cohesion,
influence
and parapsychology. The committee met as a whole
times in 2 years,
in whole or part made ten
site
visits
invited twenty or so briefings, and commissioned
fcj
background review papers. 2
It met twice with a
ftj,
source Advisory Group of army officers formed for ^
ft/*
,
purpose.
. Lit
r\
ARMY BACKGROUND
The army’s interest in parapsychology
is reported to
be longstanding, including, for example, sponsorship m
research by J.B. Rhine in the early 1950s. Remote,
viewing experiments were conducted for the army by the
Stanford Research Institute in the 1970s. A military coj^
cern has been that the Soviets have been active
in the'
development of psychic abilities, including the ability to
affect the behavior of others through mental telepathy. A
proposal developed in the army for the First Earth Bat.
talion envisioned warrior monks with a range of parapsy
margin.
THE COMMITTEE’S APPROACH
The committee could easily imagine the great difficul-
ties faced in converting recruits, most of them with min-
1^.1
The committee consi sted of John A. Swets,
chair, Robert A.
/ Bjork, Thomas D. Cook, Gerald C. Davison
Lloyd G. Humphreys
*
Ray Hyman, Daniel M. Landers, Sandra A. Mobley, Lyman
Porter,
Michael
I. Posner, Walter Schneider, Jerome
E.
Singer,
Sally ”
Springer, and Richard F. Thompson.
2. Ten commissioned papers, available from the National Academy
Press, are these: Eric Eich, Learning during sleep; Robert E. Slavi,’
Principles of effective
instruction; Deborah
L.
Feltz,
Daniel It
Landers
and Betsy J. Becker, A revised meta-analysis of the mentil^
practice literature on motor skill learning; Seymour Levine, Stress*,
performance; Raymond W. Novaco, Stress reduction and the mililajjj
Dean G. Pruitt, Jennifer Crocker, and Deborah Hanes, Matching*!
other influence strategies; Boaz Tamir and Gideon Kunda, Culture*,
military performance; James E. Alcock, A comprehensive review d,
major empirical studies in parapsychology involving random event gtr
erators and remote viewing; Monica J. Harris and Robert RosenlM,
Interpersonal expectancy
effects and human performance
research
Dale Griffin, Intuitive judgment and the evaluation of evidence.
_
3 The Resource Advisory Group consisted of general office
f
held the positions of Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, Deputy
of Staff for Intelligence, Director of Army Research and Technolofc
Commander of the Soldier Support Center, and Commander,
Research and Development Command and as well the Assistant*
retary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs.
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I abilities allowing them, for example, to leave
jes and
to walk through
walls.
(See,
e.g.,
tfjeif ^°.Qgg
) These ideas and enhancement techniques
Squ<
res
’
mentioned above were advanced by an infor-
of the S
in Df some 300 army officers known as the Delta
dial &T* t0 be COnfused with the antiterrorist unit hav-
f°rCe
ame name). Several other task forces in the army
ingthe
reanized in the 1970s to examine and promote the
entiai memo pUning much of this together for
An !v was written in 1982 by General Thurman, then
,he ^nant general and deputy chief of staff for person-
a ,ieihurman went on to become a four-star general and
°el
'
hief of staff, and was an architect of the army ’ s very
viCe
^sftil recruiting campaign with the slogan of “Be all
sUC
n can be ”) He subsequently led the army s train-
,bat
ffnrt as commander of the Training and Doctrine
C
and. His memo identified “accelerated learning,
f ial focus,
previsualization, psychokinetics and
vTnetics, remote viewing, biophysical stress preven-
” as techniques that should be considered.
It
lion
’
sed in part on a half-dozen commercially available
techniques that may be characterized as follows.
Zveestive accelerative learning and teaching tech-
(SALTT) combine physical relaxation, mental
"Incentration, guided imagery, suggestion, and baroque
C
usic to improve classroom performance. The Journal of
Society for Accelerative Learning and Teaching pub-
ST evaluations of applications of SALTT to language
training, typing instruction, high-school science courses,
^Concentrix designates a specific procedure for training
visual concentration on a target, broadly defined, and
maximizing hand-eye coordination, balance, body con-
trol
and sensory and visualization
skills.
It
is intended
for ’application not only to marksmanship but to the op-
eration of complex equipment, movement over long dis-
tances with the objectives of reducing fatigue, and intel-
ligence gathering.
Hemi-Sync,® short for hemispheric synchronization,
consists of presenting tones of slightly
different
fre-
quency to each ear to produce a beating sound. An EEG-
measured brain response follows changes in the beat
re-
quency and changing sound patterns are thought
to
change states of awareness. Recommended applications
are for language learning, stress reduction, reading skills,
problem solving, creativity, and sleep control.
Stress-management techniques are designed to allevi
ate anxiety and tension and are implemented by selt-help
books and groups and by clinics. They often emphasize
fitness,
nutrition, and
life
styles, as well as
strategies
such as progressive relaxation and image rehearsal. Pro-
moters claim an interactive effect and put forth a partic-
ular package of techniques.
Neurolinguistic programming (NLP)
is intended[pri-
marily to be a means of exerting influence over others.
The skilled practitioner is supposed to be able to deter-
mine what representational system
(e.g.,
visual,
audi-
tory, or kinesthetic) another person is using at the mo-
ment—by observing his or her speech, eye movements,
and posture—and then to frame communications to that
person in terms of the particular representational system
in use. A national association is reported to have a mem-
bership of about 500 persons.
In
1983, an ad hoc subgroup of the Army Science
Board, formed in response to General Thurman s memo,
issued a report supportive of further consideration ot
these techniques. The group had been exposed to them in
an “experiential workshop format”
during a four-day
meeting
at the Monroe
Institute of Applied Sciences,
developer of Hemi-Sync.
It recommended that formal
mechanisms be established to undertake a major effort on
“human technologies,”
that “technologies should be
sorted into those which require a scientific base and need
verifiable, repeatable data for evaluation versus those
which are more analytic representing principles of good
practice and are evaluated by consensus, acceptance and
overall effectiveness,” and, further, that research efforts
be managed jointly by the Army Research Institute and
the Medical R&D Command.
In 1984, ARI, which reported then to General lhur-
man, hired a program manager, commissioned review pa-
pers on five techniques, and requested of the National
Research Council that a committee examine the area. In
1985, ARI initiated research on several of the techniques
and reviewed army research in progress elsewhere.
THE COMMITTEE’S SPECIFIC FINDINGS
Learning During Sleep
The committee recommended that the army give sleep
learning a “second look.” Considering only the sleep-
learning literature, there seemed little basis for any kind
of positive recommendation. This conclusion was rein-
forced in a detailed briefing by LaVeme Johnson of the
Naval Health Research Center. When all possible criteria
are applied to verify that the learner is truly asleep, there
appears to be no evidence of conscious recognition or
recall of materials presented during sleep (for a thorough
review, see Aarons,
1976). In fact, since the mid-1970s
research activity on sleep learning has nearly stopped, at
least in this country.
The committee, however, was influenced by recent
developments in basic research on “implicit memory,
“stimulus-driven processing,” “learning without aware-
ness,” and related topics (for reviews, see Richardson-
Klavehn & Bjork,
1988; Schacter,
1987; Shimamura,
1986; and the commissioned paper by Eich, footnote 2).
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PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Enhancing Human Performance
That research, employing amnesic as well as normal sub-
jects, has
illustrated that certain indirect measures of
memory
(for example, perceptual
identification, word-
fragment completion, procedural
skills) can show large
effects of prior episodes when conventional recall and
recognition measures
fail
to show any such
effects.
Viewed
in that context, only certain types of learning
should take place during true EEG-verified
sleep, and
learning should show up on only certain types of memory
tests. In general, the past negative results were obtained
with inappropriate presentation procedures and with test-
ing procedures that were insensitive to any learning that
might take place.
The committee’s primary recommendation was
that
the degree of learning of materials presented during sleep
be examined again as a basic-research problem. Rather
than looking at intentional recall or recognition of mate-
rial presented during true sleep, the committee urged the
army to look for effects such as lowering of perceptual
thresholds for items presented during sleep, semantic or
affective biasing in the postsleep interpretation of verbal
items as a consequence of their being presented in biased
contexts during
sleep,
repetition
effects (enhancing
postsleep performance on
material studied before the
sleep period by repeating the material during the sleep
period), and priming effects (facilitating postsleep acqui-
sition of material by presenting that material during the
preceding sleep period).
Recent research on
state dependencies
in human
learning (Eich,
1989) also influenced the committee.
If
learning during
sleep
is
to some extent
state-specific,
then
it might transfer more effectively to the states of
drowsiness and
semisleep
that accompany exhaustion
and sleep deprivation than
it does to the normal waking
state.
Since cognitive performance
deteriorates under
sleep deprivation,
such
potential
transfer of sleep-
training might help the subject when he or she needs
it
most.
Finally, the committee thought that learning that
depends on sleep disruption might be examined from a
cost-benefit standpoint; procedures
that
disrupt
the
quantity or quality of sleep might shorten training or have
other benefits that could outweigh their costs.
Accelerated Learning
The committee focused primarily on one
particular
learning package, SALTT (Suggestive accelerative learn-
ing and teaching techniques.) Literature in the Journal of
the Society of Accelerative Learning was reviewed and
committee member Schneider attended the society’s na-
tional meeting
in
1986. The commissioned paper by
Slavin provided background information on the teacher’s
contributions to effective instruction and the paper by
Harris and Rosenthal considered the potential contribu-
>1
tion of the learner’s expectations in the SALTT envL
I ^
ment (see footnote 2).
\
jc
The committee concluded that the extravagant C|^ I
c
for accelerated learning programs are unjustified. T^\
fectiveness of such programs did not exceed what rJff
c
be expected on the basis of the mainstream instruct^
s
elements
(for example, imagery, cooperative lear^
<
tests as motivational devices and learning events) tha^
t
embedded in a non-traditional framework including
,
laxation exercises and special music. The committee^
feel, however, that there was value in the kind of hoW
approach to instruction exemplified by such progra,5
The army was encouraged to use its resources to evaliJ
competing
training procedures
in order to
isolateT
components of instruction that are effective in army ^
tings.
Improving Motor Skills
The committee focused on three strategies to enha^
motor
skills: mental practice, visual concentration, ^
biofeedback. A background paper by Feltz, Landers, am
Becker on the mental-practice literature was solicited by
the committee (see footnote 2), and there were four brief,
ings: one on peak performance issues, and three bye*.;
perts on or promoters of visual-training techniques.
Iq!
addition, Landers and Bjork made site visits to the head.?
quarters of SyberVision® and to the Vic Braden Tennis?
Academy. SyberVision is a highly successful marketer of;
audio and visual tapes designed to enhance skills such as!
golf,
tennis,
skiing, bowling,
racquetball, and
others,?
Tapes such as “The Neuropsychology of Achievement"?
address more global
skills. What
is shown on the tapes!
and the instructions to the learner are supposedly guided?
by a principle of “neuromuscular programming,”
which?,
is in turn derived from Karl Pribram’s holographic theory?
of brain function. The subcommittee interviewed
Pri-y
bram, director of research for SyberVision, and Stephen?
DeVore, founder and president.
With respect to mental practice, defined as “the sym-
:
bolic rehearsal of a physical activity in the absence of any
?
gross muscular movements” (Richardson,
1967, p. 95),|
the committee’s recommendations were quite positive. A
meta-analysis of the relevant research literature revealed
t
that mental practice yields a gain in performance on the
-
order of half a standard deviation when compared to ap-
'
propriate controls. The gain is somewhat greater for mo-jy
tor tasks that incorporate a substantial cognitive compo-j
nent, and the advantages of mental practice can
be!
enhanced if physical practice and mental practice are in-
.f
terspersed. The committee recommended that the army|
evaluate mental practice as a training component in op-j?
erational military tasks, and that the army pursue basic!
research to determine what mixture of mental and phys l
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