Implicit modeling involves copying another person's physiology, posture and so on in order to get an intuitive feel for how they do what they do.
Natural Implicit Modeling
Implicit modeling can be thought of as “copying”. If you have ever watched children after they have seen an exciting movie they will play at being the characters, mimicking the behaviors they have seen, including facial expressions, movement, language, words and phrases etc.
This is a natural human learning process, and is hard-wired into our brains; when we see an action performed our brains react as if we were actually doing it ourselves. This provides an initial “experience” of performing the action that the brain uses as a reference or model prior to actually do it.
I remember as a child, I would watch the old westerns, cowboys and Indians (not very PC these days!) my friends and I would play for hours creeping through the woods.
Now you may remember some time, some occasion from your own childhood when you pretended to be somebody else. Perhaps you had been to see a movie and wanted to be the hero or heroine. Maybe it was a baseball player, tennis player, or some other sports star. Maybe it was a pop star, a movie star. Maybe it was a teacher or someone else at school you admired. I don’t know, but I do know that we have all had these experiences.
And what I’d like you to do is to pick an experience, now, like that, when you admired a person, and wanted to be them, and pretended to be them. Some person who was or is your hero! Remember what it feels like, now, really step back into this experience. Feel what it feels like to have that child-like curiosity now, about how things are done, and that child-like belief that you can be another person, that child-like openness to becoming another person, for a time.
And as you’re remembering and feeling that, begin to remember, to see what you saw, when you looked at your hero, with that child-like gaze. It wasn’t necessary to really understand now exactly what they are doing, just looking softly at them and noticing how they stand, and how they are moving, and how they are breathing. Seeing their face and their expression.
And remember what it was like as you find yourself becoming your hero, seeing out of their eyes, feeling what they are feeling, having the skills that they have, believing we can do anything and everything our hero can do..
Implicit modeling uses this principle as the first step to learning a skill.
Implicit modeling relies on the fact that BMIRs reflect the underlying state. While it is not necessarily true that adopting BMIRs will exactly replicate the state, there is a link between the two. Adopting the BMIRs of the skilled person while attempting their skill may offer us some intuitive feel for the skill.
The Nerk-Nerk State
The Nerk-Nerk state is a state of pure sensory observation, uncolored by beliefs, values and other “filters”. It is of course a theoretical state impossible to achieve in practice. However, we can consider the possibility of such a state.
Implicit Modeling in Practice
Here is the process for Implicit Modeling:
• Pick a subject who you would like to copy.
• Ask them to perform the specific skill that you are seeking to model. If the skill is complex, pick one aspect and use the principles of micro-modeling.
• Adopt the Nerk-Nerk state.
• As you watch them perform the skill, take in everything they are doing at the same time. Do not seek to focus on their eye-accessing, or specific behaviors. Just watch them.
• Adopt their posture, facial expression, tone, breathing, on a ‘global’ basis.
• Perform the behavior while “in their state” as reflected in the BMIRs.
• Become aware of what you learn, about performing the skill.
• Now, as yourself, attempt to perform the skill.
• Notice differences between the experiences.
In order to do Implicit Modeling we should copy posture and other BMIRs without judgement as to what they mean.
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