Developing understanding of the mechanism and teaching aviators to
recognize the situations when they are likely to revert to old
innapropriate ways of performing will not help much, unfortunately.
Haven't we been doing that for years? Don't we always take great pains to
point out that stress and fatigue and high workload etc are situations
where your decision making may be sub-optimal? Most of us know these
things very well and yet we still get into trouble from time to time.
You see, the problem with reversion to automatic decision making is
simply that it is *automatic*, that is, it is below the level of
conscious awareness. No matter how aware you are beforehand of certain
situations that are likely to cause you problems, by the time you're in
the thick of the action you no longer have the luxury or the time to be
"consciously aware and concentrating" on what you're supposed to do (and
also being aware of what *not* to do). Awareness has gone out the window!=20
In high pressure situations your brain is robbed of its ability to choose
or select what it will concentrate on and only your learned reflexes
(habits if you like) can save (or damn) you. It is exactly at these
moments that your prior learning will come to the fore - those automatic
reflexes and responses you developed during training and practiced so
many times - that is what will dominate and control how you behave in
that emergency. Now, if what you learned previously was the "correct"
response, then everything is fine; but if what you learned before is now
"incorrect" (because this is a new plane and the controls are different
or the gauges are different or it responds differently or you have to fly
it differently, etc from the one you trained on and flew for so many
years), then you will be in trouble. The powerful interference effect due
to your prior knowledge and skills (known in the research literature for
years as proactive inhibition) will suppress or interfere with your
ability to apply your "new", "correct" learning. You will then,
inadvertently, revert to that inappropriate previously learned set of
skills and responses. And by the time you've done that, it may be too
late to recover the "error". The concept of "error management and
containment" is also of no use at this point because that also relies on
the presence of conscious awareness.=20
It is important to realise that the automatic decision making mode that
we revert to under pressure or when fatigued or when our concentration
lapses is not something we have any control over - it is involuntary
because it is automatic, unconscious. *That* is where the problem lies.
Teaching *awareness* of this widespread human "failing" , however
desirable, will not get rid of the problem. Conventional training does
not deal with this issue apart from re-emphasizing yet again the need to
"create awareness" which is something people have been saying for years -
you need an alternative training approach like the one I describe on our
web site: http://www.personalbest.com.au/~pbaxter/training.htm. There are
a couple of other documented solutions as well but they are not as easy
to apply as this one and they do also take longer to work.
Forgive the length of all this but the concepts involved are difficult to
express clearly and concisely.=20
Paul
<excerpt><smaller>>But as soon as our brain gets under pressure, we
revert to what you call "naturalistic DM" or "Recognition Primed DM".
Understanding this mechanism and recognizing the situations when we
revert to "automatic mode" (thank you, Paul!), is of utmost importance in
HF training.
</smaller></excerpt><smaller>The more we teach the "traps", that we can
fall into, the better is our chance to avoid them.<<</smaller>
Paul Baxter Ph.D. M.A. Dip.T. MAPS
The Habit Shop: A performance enhancement consultancy
25 Coolaroo Crescent Jindalee Australia 4074
Ph. +61-(0)500-579-257. Fax +61-(0)7-3376-1576. Mobile +61-(0)418-784-951
E-mail: pbaxter_at_personalbest.com.au
http://www.personalbest.com.au/~pbaxter/training.htm