Experience Dependent Plasticity Analysis

This week, for my perceptual phenomenon, I have chosen to write about experience-dependent plasticity. Defined in our text, this basically means an individual’s partiality towards the way things have always been for them; their influences and habits of their personal experiences (Goldstein, 2010). In the military, regardless of which branch, this perceptual phenomenon can make or break a team environment due to the way individuals are willing to receive change and or have the ability and knowledge to move from familiar situations into something with less recognizable surroundings. According to our text, raising an individual in an environment with only one type of stimuli results in the individual being predominantly geared towards those stimuli (Goldstein, 2010). The military, thru basic training or boot camp, does a fantastic job in breaking the individual down and breaking the normal behaviors of the individual and then proceeds in rebuilding the individual into a gear in the overall engine that must conform to
One example of experience-dependent plasticity is how we, in the military introduce the Soldier to a variety of possible experiences that may or may not occur in combat. For instance, in 2010, 184 Soldiers lost their lives to privately owned vehicle accidents; 2011, 176 lost their lives, and the numbers remained the same in 2012 (Wolff, 2012). As a result of this and many other programs, the Army designed training to revolve around keeping the Soldier alive at home. There were new rollover drills, virtual “driving-while-impaired” training programs, etc. All of this has resulted in a lower number of overall Soldier deaths due to privately owned vehicle