Cognitive Processes: Attention, Perception, Memory, and Decision Making
Core concepts
Operators work within bounded cognition. Understand selective and divided attention, vigilance decrement (performance falls in prolonged low-event monitoring), inattentional blindness and change blindness (failures to notice unexpected or altered indications), and expectancy effects (seeing what is expected). Perception is constructive: ambiguous or degraded cues are filled from prior expectation, a major source of misdiagnosis.
Memory matters in two ways. Working memory is limited in capacity and duration, so procedures and displays offload it; long-term memory supplies schemas that speed recognition but can entrench wrong diagnoses. Know recognition-primed decision making (experts match patterns and mentally simulate), confirmation bias, anchoring, availability, and fixation. Also understand mental models and mode confusion when automation behaves differently from the operator's model.
Traps in questions
- Assuming trained operators are immune to inattentional blindness; expertise does not prevent it.
- Confusing confirmation bias (seeking supporting evidence) with anchoring (over-weighting an initial value).
- Treating vigilance problems as motivational rather than a normal cognitive limit.
- Assuming more information improves decisions; overload degrades it.
- Forgetting that working-memory limits are the rationale for checklists and place-keeping.
Worked rule of thumb
Use the two-hypothesis test: before committing to a diagnosis, state at least two plausible causes and name the indication that would distinguish them. If no such indication exists, request independent verification. Example: alarms suggest a pump trip, but an alternative is a false instrument signal. The distinguishing evidence might be a correlated flow reading or a local check. Forcing this comparison counters anchoring and confirmation bias and converts an intuitive match into a testable one.