Sensory or Intelligence Data Compression Can Drive the Yerkes–Dodson Effect

New probability models of inherently embodied cognition derived from the asymptotic limit theorems of information and control theories show, where the Weber–Fechner, Stevens, Hick–Hyman, and Pieron’s psychophysics laws—and analogous processes of sensory data rate compression—operate, that sufficient arousal will engender the classic Yerkes–Dodson effect responses for ‘easy’ and ‘difficult’ challenges, depending on the level of ‘noise’ impeding the cognition rate. A ‘hallucination’ mode is found to arise at low arousal, and, in the face of sufficient noise, a ‘panic’ mode at high arousal. Systems that are ‘ductile’ in a formal sense, however, are not afflicted by such hallucination, although panic remains for difficult challenges. Similar dynamics that surround organized conflict on ‘Clausewitz landscapes’ of fog, friction, and deadly adversarial intent have long been studied. We find a central mechanism for cognitive failure under increasing stress across a very broad range of modalities to be enough—usually badly needed—compression of sensory/intelligence and internal information transmission rates. It seems possible, with some effort, to convert the probability models developed here into robust statistical tools for the study and limited control of critical real-time, real-world embodied cognitive phenomena associated with cellular, neural, individual, machine, and institutional systems and their many composites.