Missing Critical Auditory Alarms in Aeronautics: Evidence for Inattentional Deafness?

Abstract

The inability of pilots to detect unexpected changes in the environment (e.g., auditory alarms) is a critical problem in aeronautics. The lack of response to alarms is not thought to be a perceptual/attentional issue, but rather that pilots choose to ignore such warnings due to cognitive biases. In the current paper we consider an alternative explanation, by extending the phenomenon of inattentional deafness to aeronautics. Fourteen pilots equipped with an eye tracker and an electrocardiogram performed landings in a flight simulator. During the critical landing, an auditory landing gear alarm was triggered while the volunteers also faced a windshear. Eight out of 14 pilots did not report the occurrence of the critical alarm during the debriefing. Interestingly, all but one of these ‘deaf’ pilots failed to perform the adequate go-around behavior. These findings establish inattentional deafness as a cognitive phenomenon that is critical for air safety.