Incredible as the above example may seem to some of you readers, we have found counterparts almost as striking in human behavior when people refuse to change highly valued but inappropriate test criteria.

One of the authors once worked with a woman who was consistently verbally and physically abused by her husband. She had intended to leave the relationship after each incident (which were getting more and more violent) but her husband would always buy her something or do something to make up with her so she wouldn't go. After a few days or weeks, however, her husband would again become violent and the pattern would repeat itself much to the dismay of the unhappy and confused woman. After listening to the woman's description of her problem the author told her a story that he had been told as a child. The story was about a man who worked in a saw mill. The man was in one part of the mill stacking some freshly cut boards when he suddenly heard a terrible cry coming from the other room. He immediatly rushed in the other room to investigate and came across one of his co–workers standing by an enormous circular saw. The co–worker was clutching his hand and in great pain, and had obviously just severed a finger from his left hand. The man who had just entered the room ran up to him exclaiming, "Oh my God, what happened?" To which the other responded, "Well I was just reaching for that board like this and OUCH … THERE GOES ANOTHER ONE!"

The woman left the author's office somewhat dazed by the story but called the author back about a month later with the news of the great changes she had made in her life. She had been abused by her husband again but this time she had moved out, gotten herself a job, thwarted his attempts to lure her back and was living happily in another town. She finished her triumphant account with the comment, "I didn't want to cut off another finger."

2.6 The Mechanics of Strategies

We have mentioned a number of times that during the securing of a particular outcome, whether it be developing a particular skill, making or keeping oneself healthy, learning a new task, communicating with a particular individual, etc., it is necessary at certain points in time to tune into the information in one particular representational system to a greater degree than information in the others. The order in which we do this and the way in which the information we tune into initiates or modulates information in our other representational systems is also of extreme importance. An individual learning to compose music, for example, will probably pay more attention to the auditory class of sensory experience than would an individual learning chemistry or juggling. In fact, an individual who composes music effectively will probably sequence his/her representational systems differently than an individual who effectively performs music. The two are essentially different tasks and involve different strategies.

Those attempting to apply the same perceptual–motor tests and operations for learning something like mathematics (which tends to be a primarily visual skill) to tasks like learning football or gymnastics (which require much greater attention to tactile and proprioceptive sensations) will experience difficulty.

When we talk about "paying attention to," "tuning in to," "relying on" or "valuing" a particular representational system, we do not, of course, mean to imply that the others stop working at that time. We are simply implying that the behavioral significance or signal value of the activity of the selected representational system increases with respect to the others. The 4–tuple stipulates that all of our senses are processing some representation, both from internal and external sources, at any point in time. Obviously, your visual cortex does not stop functioning while you are listening intently to music or to an internal dialogue. Rather, at each step in any strategy the activity in one representational system will have a higher intensity or signal value than the others and will assume what we might call "prime control" for that particular duration of time.

In reproducing the behavioral sequence required to achieve some outcome that we are motivated to secure, whether it is an ability we have admired in someone else or a resource that we now have infrequent or irregular access to, we may need to employ varying degrees of representational activity in the system we are accessing. Some strategies involve the achievement of a very sharp signal for a particular representation; others may require rapid and complex transitions and representations. Sometimes people experience difficulty accessing a representational system with the appropriate strength, clarity and resonance. Others may tune in to a representational system too strongly.

In Patterns II we introduced a concept we call the "R–operator," which operates on 4–tuples at various points in time to single out one representational system as more significant in consciousness than the others. The "mechanism" of the R–operator is a combination of what we call "accessing cues" and previously established synesthesia patterns.

Accessing, or tuning in to a particular representational system, is in some ways like tuning a radio. All of the various radio stations are always transmitting through their own signal frequencies, but by adjusting the internal works of our receiver, we can tune in to one signal or frequency in such a way that we pick up little or no interference from the others.

Accessing cues are behaviors that we develop to tune our bodies and affect our neurology in such a way that we can access one representational system more strongly than the others. Just as we prepare to execute any overt behavior independently from the other choices available to us, like jumping, laughing, running or talking, by flexing our muscles and changing our breathing rates and eye scanning patterns in the specific ways that single out that behavior from all others, we operate similarly with cognitive behavior and complex internal processing. Each of us must systematically cycle through specific and recurrent behavioral cues to perform our strategies.

Right now, stop and image as vividly as possible the color and pattern on your bedspread… .

If this isn't in your direct line of vision, you had to just now tune your bodily and neural systems to access an internal visual image of your bedspread over the other incoming sensations in your visual, auditory, kinesthetic and olfactory systems. If it is in your direct line of vision you would still have had to tune your body and neurology to accept and focus on the external visual experience of color and pattern over your other sensory experiences. If you made an internal picture in your mind's eye, you may have noticed that to do so clearly you defocused your eyes momentarily as you stared at this page in the book, so that the words and other external visual input became blurred. Perhaps you looked away from the book to break visual contact, shifting your eyes up and to the left (or perhaps it was up and to the right, if you are left handed). You may have even closed your eyes. Did you notice any alteration in your breathing pattern? Perhaps it shifted higher up in your chest and became more shallow or stopped altogether for a moment. You might also have experienced a slight tension in your shoulder muscles, and perhaps became aware that your shoulders hunched slightly forward. To look clearly at your bedspread externally would require observable behavioral adjustments as well. You would have to orient your head in the appropriate direction and tighten or slacken certain muscles around your eyes to allow you to focus closely on the object.

Now take some time and get in touch with the last time you felt soaking wet… .

To access this modality–specific experience you again had to tune your body and neurology, however slightly, to make that particular representation stand out. Some of you will have noticed that to do this you had to go through a memory strategy — perhaps you started by asking yourself internally, "Now when was the last time I felt really wet?" and proceeded to create a series of internal images or looked around externally to see possible places in your external environment where you might have gotten wet, before you were able to achieve the outcome of accessing the feeling. Perhaps you began right off with visual images. You might have been able to access this feeling immediately, but noticed that for the task of seeing your bedspread you had to first feel yourself standing in the room before you could see the color clearly.