LOMCEVAK Misdirection may not be an ideal term, depending on how it is interpreted, in that an illusionist will actively misdirect, and the onlooker will be misdirected. Here there is no deliberate third-party misdirection, but the consequences can be the same.
People crash cars when texting not because they are deliberately not looking at the road: they think they are still monitoring the road. And to some extent they are, enough to usually have no consequences and thus leave the impression that their monitoring was unimpaired. Statistics prove this very wrong.
Texting is irresponsible, but problem solving in a cockpit can be essential. Yet if you focus on the wrong problem at the wrong moment, you may metaphorically be 'texting' whilst something catastrophic is developing. For instance, if in mid-manoeuvre you find yourself, say, surprised to be drifting compass bearing, or seeing a minor thrust anomaly, that need not be imminently dangerous. But the cognitive danger is: you fly a manoeuvre 50 times no problem. 51st time there's a trivial issue. You split attention to the very noticeable, unusual issue which you always otherwise devote in full to 'routine' monitoring which though routine and 'never' far from nominal is in fact safety critical. Then comes confusion and exponentiating attention-narrowing anxiety: you are behind the aircraft and something ugly is unfolding very fast. Probably because at some point you glanced and saw what you expected to see rather than what was really there.
This is perhaps an unrecognised area in that it is as much 'human limitation' as 'pilot error' - we must all constantly perform 'cognitive triage', devoting attention where is is most needed, but it is the nature of the human mind that it cannot get this right instantly on every occasion, especially as it takes some attention to even a trivial issue in order to simply establish that it is indeed trivial
A related danger lies in fixating upon an element of the anomaly which blinds you to the bigger problem, even to the extent of missing the obvious: I'd not be surprised for there to have been CFIT incidents involving crews busily trying to figure out why the stupid 'terrain' enunciation wouldn't shut up.
There is a psychological tenet which I could quote here outside its usual application: 'we are free to construe but bound by our constructions'. You can jump to any number of conclusions, but once you jump to one your mind is no longer open.
Last edited by robdean; 23rd Mar 2017 at 14:02.