A) Loss of Situational Awareness Has Become a Common Epithet

Situational Awareness

I) What is it? A) “Loss of situational awareness” has become a common epithet B) But what do you lose when you lose situational awareness? (Dekker, 2004) C) Little basic research; experimental psychology has tended to focus on well- defined problems. In real world, the nature of the problem is frequently unclear.

II) Definition A) Situational Awareness is a cognitive representation (mental model) of an individual’s environment including: 1) In proximal (e.g., cockpit) and distal (e.g., world outside aircraft) physical space i) Physical locations/states of important objects a) e.g., oil temp dial, mountain ii) Expected locations/states of important objects in near future a) e.g., oil temp trend, position of aircraft relative to mountain iii) Important aspects of those objects 2) Metacognition i) Knowing what you know and don’t know B) Definition may be extended to social environment

III) How Situational Awareness Fails A) Can fail to develop a model of the environment 1) E.g., novice perceives information but fails to integrate it B) Can develop an incorrect model of the environment 1) E.g., pilot believes that aircraft is heading away from navigation beacon but instead is heading towards it C) Can develop a correct model of the environment but fail to monitor departure of environment from model 1) E.g., wind blows aircraft off course but drift is not noticed

IV) Cognitive process analysis A) Attention 1) Failure of executive attention i) UAL DC-8 PDX fuel exhaustion accident a) Captain fails to monitor fuel state ii) Eastern L-1011 Florida everglades accident a) Captain fails to monitor altitude B) Perception 1) Failure to perceive i) Air traffic lost in ground clutter 2) Misperception i) Runway illusions C) Encoding 1) Failure to interpret information i) Digital displays vs. analog displays 2) Misinterpretation of information i) KAL 801 747-300 Nimitz Hill, Guam crash ii) Roseburg approach iii) Tail stall cues vs. wing stall cues D) Storage / Retrieval 1) Fail to retrieve / Forget information i) Number of aircraft in landing sequence ii) Aircraft on runway not cleared for takeoff iii) LAX runway accident 2) Retrieve incorrect information i) Landing without clearance E) Information integration 1) Fail to integrate information i) Cues to icing 2) Integrate information incorrectly i) Weather now vs. weather later

V) Metacognition & Recovery of Situational Awareness A) How do you know that you don’t know? B) We don’t know C) Pattern recognition and “gut-level” feelings