Basic Aviation Psychology
Domain 3 tests attention, workload, vigilance, perception, memory, learning, personality, motivation and stress. The exam favours applied questions: which psychological limit explains this error, and what countermeasure reduces it?
Core limits
- Attention is limited and selective. Dividing attention between tasks degrades one or both, especially under high workload.
- Vigilance decrement: detection of rare signals falls over time; monitoring tasks need active scanning and breaks.
- Working memory is short-lived and capacity-limited; checklists and verbal callouts externalise memory.
- Perception is constructive: expectation and motivation can make a pilot 'see' or 'hear' what is expected.
- Yerkes-Dodson: moderate arousal improves performance; high arousal narrows attention and increases rigidity.
Worked example
During a busy departure, a pilot is concentrating on the FMS and misses a radio call and a slight altitude deviation. This is not laziness: attention was tunnelled onto one task, workload was high and vigilance for the altitude trend dropped. Countermeasures include task shedding, prioritising aviate-navigate-communicate, and using callouts to reallocate attention.
Traps
Believing attention can be trained to be unlimited; confusing vigilance with arousal; assuming memory is a reliable recorder; treating personality labels as predictions of behaviour.