Originally Posted by
alf5071h
Research into loss of manual flying skills suggests that degraded cognitive skills, situation appreciation, is of greater concern,
There is scant evidence of difficulties arising from manual flight in normal operation, but there has been many problems in abnormal situations originated by technology failure. Thus safety focus should be on the origin of abnormal situations; avoid or simplify the systems and situations which pilots are required to understand - fix the machine not the man.
Proficiency at manual flying (or any psychomotor task for that matter) has a direct impact on cognitive processing, so they really can't be separated. The reason for this relates to the difference between working and procedural memory. Learning a new skill, whether it be typing, knitting, pinball, shooting goals, or flying initially requires a great deal of working memory. The problem is that there is only so much working memory available, so other cognitive tasks suffer. This is why a student pilot's auditory and verbal processing plummets early in training - they literally cannot fly and hold a conversation at the same time. Given time and practice, the mental processes associated with these new skills shift to procedural memory thus freeing up working memory. Thus one way to rate student pilots' progress is to observe how quickly their auditory and verbal processing returns as they are performing flight duties.
To the degree that a pilot practices a certain psychomotor task repetitively, whether we are talking about basic flying skills or immediate action items (i.e. "memory" procedures, stall and/or windshear recoveries, etc.), then those tasks will draw more on procedural memory and less on working memory thus freeing cognitive resources to direct toward situational awareness or other higher cognitive tasks.
In regards to the "fix the machine" as opposed to the person, until such time that technology has advanced to the point that pilots are no longer necessary, it will have to be some of both. Neither human nor machine has been perfected, and seeing as machines are created by humans, I suspect it will be awhile until we have a flawless machine.