if it appears to be malfunctioning turn it off and revert to basic flying skills The latter part did not happen.
same applies to if you do no longer understand what it does. With all the automation and its submodes this happens faster and more often than we all like. The one pilot who pretends this has never happened or will never happen to him, due to his superior system knowledge is simply a liar.
Concerning reverting to basic skills, now there's a thing that scares me most. I've seen too much absence of such skills recently as to believe in coincidence.
We will never have automatics that are fool proof, we will never completely and continuously be aware of all modes and features of automation. We should, at least for the foreseeable future, still be able to revert to basics and reengage automatics once stabilised. This beeing neglected in basic and enhanced training, and thus lost forever, will lead to such incidents happen more often.
The perpetuous call for even more protections and automatics will always only cure some symptoms, but not aviations malaise -> lack of skill and experience.