Action Slip

Written Assignment1 - Action Slips

Action slips occurs when one produces habitual response that is inappropriate or in other words when you mean to do something but ends up doing something else. Action slip usually occur when performing a task that is high practiced or very automatic and can also occur when attention (concentrating effort on stimuli or event) is absent or when distracted by something. When action slip occurs the supervisory attention model- SAS (models how we choose actions) is not activated to stop the inappropriate behavior. When SAS is activated, we then divert our attention to our action

An example of an action slip would be, when i am studying I keep my cell phone and my TV remote on my desk so that when I take a break I will watch TV or text. One night when my dad called to check on me, I picked up the remote and started talking, of course nobody was saying anything, I looked at my phone to see if he had hang up and then I realized I was talking on my remote. Another action slip occurred when I answered my cell phone but had turned it upside down. I could not really hear the person on the other end, I looked at my phone and I realized that I was talking on the other ended. Another one was when I took my remote to class instead of taking my calculator.

I have practiced answering my phone without looking that it has become an automatic process, and I have learnt that everything on my desk goes in my book bag when am getting ready for class the next morning. In the following action slip, my attention was diverted away to trying to read my book while trying to answer the call and thinking about what I was going to wear in the morning. In these action slips the SAS is not activated, so I ended up with inappropriate responses. I realized I was doing the wrong thing when I diverted from studying or thinking about the clothes I am going to wear to the phone call and putting my school stuff in my book bag. Also my cell phone, the remote, and my calculator share the same characteristics, that is, it's already programmed in my memory that my cell phone , the remote and calculator are squared with buttons on it so when I grabbed the wrong one I didn't realized it until I realized it was for a different task.

All in all action slip when a task is automatic and involve intrusions of other habitual actions that share some characteristics with the intended action, to avoid, it one must pay attention to the task being performed.