Memory & Skill

5. Types of Memory & Sensory Memories

5.1 The Three Types of Memory

• Sensory memory
• Short-term (or working) memory
• Long-term memory

5.2 Receptors & Sensory Memories — Key Features

• There is a separate memory store for each sensory system.
• The input decays rapidly.

The sensory stores for sight and sound are the most important, and knowledge of these is necessary.

5.3 Information Processing Model — Diagrammatic View

CINEMATIC DIAGRAM — pending generation (Banana Pro)Fig 20.1 (Types of Memory).

5.4 Sensory Memory for Sight — Iconic Memory

The Iconic Memory is the visual sensory store. It only lasts for between 0.5 and 1 second.

70–80 % of the information processed by humans is received through the visual channel.

5.5 Sensory Adaptation (Habituation)

All senses adapt, either partially or completely, to their stimuli after a period of time.

6. Anticipation & Perception

6.1 Perception

Perception involves the conversion of the sensory information received into a meaningful structure.

Sensory information that we expect to receive is more easily perceived and integrated when it actually occurs, compared with totally unexpected information.

"We can 'perceive' only that which we can 'conceive', but we perceive only a fraction of the information reaching our senses at any moment."

The process of perception is greatly assisted by our ability to form mental and three-dimensional visual models.

6.2 Funneled Perception

Perception of a situation can differ depending upon the starting point of an observer.

7. Attention

Attention is the process of directing and focusing psychological resources to enhance perception, performance and mental experience. To pay attention to something is to concentrate on it — a stimulus, threat, decision or calculation. Critically, attention is limited; if some attention is being used for one thing, it cannot be used for something else.

7.1 Types of Attention

1. Selective Attention — inputs are sampled continually to decide their relevance to the present task at hand.
2. Divided Attention — when our central decision-making channel can time-share between a number of tasks, executing several mental activities at almost the same time (e.g. switching attention from outside the aircraft to the airspeed indicator and monitoring the progress of a motor programme such as flying or taxiing on a relatively subconscious level, while making a radio call at the same time).

The human brain has different reservoirs of resources for information-gathering, information-processing, or the action phase.

7.2 Lack of Attention

The major danger for pilots is the poor management of attention.

7.3 Attention Mechanism — Why It Is Required

Because of two potentially limiting stages in processing information:

1. There is a limit to the number of items held or maintained in short-term memory (working memory).
2. Our channel capacity is limited.

7.4 Choice of Item

Attention is the deliberate devotion of cognitive resources to a specific item. Although attention can move very quickly from item to item, it can only deal with one at a time — so the pilot must consciously prioritize.

7.5 The Cocktail Party Effect

With many conversations occurring all around, one conversation can suddenly break through to attention because a word or phrase was particularly meaningful — the classic example is a person hearing their own name mentioned in another conversation that they were not paying attention to.

8. Vigilance & Complacency

Vigilance = the capability to be sensitive to potential changes in one's environment, i.e. the capability to reach a level of alertness above a threshold for a certain period of time — rather than the state of alertness itself.

8.1 Hypo (Low) Vigilance

Mainly due to the monotony of the task, tiredness, the need for sleep and a lack of stimulation. It may occur at any moment of the flight. Decrease in sensory perception and sensation of muscular heaviness are indications of low vigilance.

A state of high fatigue is liable to cause phases of drowsiness and hypo-vigilance, which result in a reduction of performance and unconscious phases of micro-sleep.

8.2 Hyper Vigilance

In its most acute forms, an extremely agitated state of panic or near panic. Characterised by indiscriminate attention to all sorts of minor and major threat cues, as the person frantically searches for means of escaping the anticipated danger.

8.3 Optimum Vigilance

Lies somewhere between hypo and hyper vigilance.

8.4 Complacency

A state of self-satisfaction with one's own performance coupled with an unawareness of danger, trouble or controversy.

CINEMATIC DIAGRAM — pending generation (Banana Pro)Fig 20.2 (Vigilance & Arousal).

9. Motor Programmes (Skills) — Anderson Model

Motor Programmes, or "Skills", are behavioural sub-routines which are learnt by practice and/or repetition and are held within the Long-Term Memory. They can be carried out without conscious thought.

In the initial phase of flight training the pilot is competent enough to fly the aircraft at this stage but does neither have a great deal of confidence in his/her abilities nor in the whole system.

9.1 Anderson Model — Three Phases

1. The Cognitive Phase
2. The Associative Phase
3. The Automatic (Autonomous) Phase

CINEMATIC DIAGRAM — pending generation (Banana Pro)Fig 20.3 (Skill Acquisition).