Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian W
Similarly, had ATC switched on the 28L lights the illusion would have been destroyed, had ATC added to the approach clearance 'runway 28L is out of use unlit and marked with a red cross' - the illusion would have been destroyed.
Originally Posted by Air Bubba
The big FAA L-893 'X' is not red, it's yellow, flashes aviation white lights and in my experience, you can see it for miles on a clear night. Hard to miss if anybody is looking out the window.
The Gorilla in the human factors research video is also totally impossible to miss unless your brain is told to focus its attention on something else. You will have to accept that when attentional tunneling occurs you will miss things that are in plain sight even those things that can be seen for miles on a clear night. This is a feature of the human attention system; trying to pretend it is not is dangerous.
I am beginning to think that rather like the decompression and hypoxia training that is done so crews recognize it, there should be some attentional training done so pilots can understand when they are likely to have cognitive issues. Unfortunately, the natural response to a stressful task with fatigue/circadian stress is to try to concentrate more and that is the classic way to initiate attentional tunneling ("count the passes by the white team" in the gorilla video)
If it is simple to ensure against the illusion by a few words on each transmission then it blocks that hole in the cheese at low cost.