Information Processing and Situational Awareness Flashcards
What path will a piece of information take through your brain?
- Input comes into the sensory register
- Selected sense get sent to the working memory
- Information coded and stored in the long term memory
What is the sensory register? What are its characteristics?
First place where all senses and input are scanned for importance.
-Very large capacity but duration is very short (few seconds)
What is the working memory? What are its characteristics?
Where inputs are sent for analysis.
Inputs can be matched with old long term memories or form new memories
Inputs are coded for storage
Capacity is 7+/-2 items
Duration is about 30 seconds
Memory will last as long as it is being used
What is the long term memory? What are its characteristics?
-Permanent, unlimited storage
What are the types of long term memory? What is each type?
-Implicit:
Procedural memory - stores motor skills
Hard to teach
Repetition is required to embed
-Explicit: -Semantic - language and information that has meaning New material will require full attention Learning in-situ will aid in recollection -Episodic - Memory that stores episodes or events It is often inaccurate due to attitudes and preferred outcomes Creates a problem with expert witnesses
What happens when the brain is ‘multi-tasking’?
The brain is changing quickly between different tasks as it is only a single channel processor
What things can act as a load on the working memory?
- Concentrating on tasks
- Attending to things
- Maintaining situational awareness
- Making decisions
What can we do to increase our attention abilities across multiple tasks?
-Time share
What can inhibit time sharing?
Stress
Over-concentration
Saturation
What can occur when our working memory reaches saturation?
Load shedding
-The brain will prioritise what it perceives as more important things
Describe attention grabbing?
- Also called the cocktail party effect
- When your name (or callsign) is spoken elsewhere in a crowded environment, and you are deeply engaged, yet you will hear it
- Allows pilots to respond immediately to radio calls when in a dense traffic environment
What is the relationship between Performance and Arousal? Who’s law is it? What is another word for arousal?
Yerkes - Dodson law
- When arousal is low performance is low
- When arousal is medium, performance is optimal
- When arousal is high, performance is low
Arousal = Stress
What is the startle effect? How can it be minimised?
- A sudden, uncontrollable event can cause the pilot to experience an uncontrollable and automatic reflex response
- Commonly known as the fight or flight it can cause inappropriate actions for the situation
To reduce:
- Maintain good situational awareness
- Always have a PFLWOP field
- Monitor engine parameters
- Be aware of traffic and terrain environment
What is perception?
An active process where you begin to interpret and organise the sensory data and send a small amount of pertinent data to the short term/working memory
What can go wrong with perception?
- It mush reach a certain threshold before it can be detected
- Expectation and experience can cause variations to what is actually experienced
- It can be biased, confused or mis-interpreted
What are come common perception abnormalities?
- Illusions
- Hallucinations
- Issues when senses conflict
What is confirmation bias?
You only take information that you expect to see and disregard any information that you will conflict with what you think
What is change-blindness?
- When focusing on one thing you sometimes won’t see things in the surrounds that are changing
- When things change gradually you don’t see that they are changing when you are inside that situation
What are some methods to increase working memory?
- Chunking
- Mnemonics
- Association
- Cards
- Rote
- Saying a written instruction aloud
- Visualisation
What problems can the long term memory have?
- Memories not always stored accurately
- Problems with retrieving them can be slowed
- New data will be harder to categorise than familiar data (first vs. second type rating)
What are the levels of processing that can be achieved?
- Conscious control: Pilot makes decisions and then acts. Operating at the rule or knowledge based level
- Sub-conscious control: Brain recognises a previously matched set of data and applies motor skills that have been learned as an unconscious reaction. Operating at the skill based level
What is the definition of situational awareness? 3 key components
The ability of a person to PERCIEVE their surroundings, COMPREHEND the meaning of those surrounds and make a PROJECTION of what they will mean in the future
What types of situational awareness must a pilot be able to maintain?
System SA Environmental SA Tactical/Mission SA Geographical SA Spatial/Temporal SA
What are the factors that affect situational awareness?
Attention System design Stress and Workload Automation Physiological factors Preconceptions Ability/ Training/ Experience Communication
What are some methods of increasing situational awareness?
Enquiry Advocacy Briefing Thinking ahead of the aircraft Reduce the requirements of the person Provide critical cues for critical events Systems support Scanning Checklists Training
How can group situational awareness be enhanced?
Use all resources Consider all crew inputs Avoid arguments Avoid winner/ loser mentality Use advocacy and enquiry Move to assertion if required Not every decision has to meet everyone's approval Communication
What is group situational awareness limited to?
The situational awareness of the captain
