Information Processing, Human Error and the Learning Process — Page 156, Lesson 238

I want to walk you through the beginning of Chapter 8, which deals with Information Processing, Human Error and the Learning Process. We're starting with the topic of Attention. Let me define attention for you precisely: attention is the deliberate devotion of cognitive resources to a specific item. In other words, it's the conscious choice to focus your mental processing power on one particular thing. Now, to be attentive, you must first be alert — but being alert alone is not enough. Being alert does not guarantee that you will pay attention to the right item at the right time. That distinction is important for a pilot. Choice of Item Because of the limitations of our central processor — the part of our brain that handles conscious thought — we are generally unable to pay attention to several different items at the same time. Attention can move very quickly from one item to another, but it can only deal with one item at a time. This is why a pilot must consciously prioritize what to attend to at any given moment. Attention Mechanisms Why do we need attention mechanisms in the first place? There are two potentially limiting stages in processing information that create this need: 1. The limit to the number of items held or maintained in short-term memory, which is sometimes called working memory. 2. Our channel capacity is limited. This means we cannot devote conscious thought — we cannot 'attend to' — all the stimuli entering our senses at once. The Cocktail Party Effect Because our channel capacity is limited, there must be a system at an early stage of the whole information processing chain that allows us to select which stimuli will be perceived consciously and used as a basis for our consideration and decisions. Some stimuli are extremely efficient at grabbing our attention. The classic example is the cocktail party effect. This refers to the phenomenon of hearing your own name in a background of many conversations. In an aviation context, this could be hearing your own radio telephony callsign among a lot of radio chatter, or detecting a smell of burning on the flight deck. Each of these stimuli will focus your attention in an attempt to get more information about what's happening. Types of Attention Attention itself is the process of directing and focusing psychological resources to enhance perception, performance, and mental experience. It has three key characteristics: - It improves mental processing. - It requires effort. - It is limited. There are two specific types of attention we need to understand: First, Selective Attention. In this type, inputs are sampled continually to decide their relevance to the present task at hand. Our names or callsigns are particularly attention-getting stimuli in this process. Second, Divided Attention. In this type, our central decision-making channel can time-share between a number of tasks. For example, the pilot flying a visual approach will be dividing his attention between looking out to maintain his approach path and checking instruments for airspeed, height, engine parameters, and so on. While it may appear that the pilot is working on several tasks simultaneously, in reality the central processor is spending a fraction of every second on any number of different problems in turn. It's rapid switching, not true multitasking.