ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 reviewed a number of general cognitive abilities important in flight and ATC operations, and the ways in which these abilities can be affected by stress. An additional skill that was mentioned, but not discussed at any length, was that of judgement or decision making. As we noted previously, faulty decision making has been implicated in a large proportion of pilot error accidents.18,28,29,60 Once thought to be an intangible aspect of airmanship or 'The Right Stuff1 (see Chapter 6), aeronautical decision making has increasingly been recognized as a cognitive function amenable to analysis and responsive to formal training. Decision making has developed into an important research field both within psychology generally and in specific applied areas such as aviation.
