Activity 4.3: Resource on Perception

Activity 4.3: Resource on Perception - View the following link for an example of fatal consequences of confirmation bias:

Flight 5191 Plane Crash

I have been fascinated with a type of information processing, called confirmation or assimilation bias, since the crash of Comair flight 5191, at Lexington's Bluegrass Airport, on August 27, 2006. Confirmation bias, which according to investigators, is the “act of only seeing evidence supporting their preconceptions”, was suspected given “the pilots never appeared confused” (p. 1). The pilots took off from the wrong runway, which was too short and too dark, crashing into a tree and the ground, the plane bursting into flames. The co-pilot, who took over the plane’s controls, was the only survivor, 49 passengers and crew died. Debbie Hersman, a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) spokesperson, described the possible causes of the crash as a “patchwork of human behavior” (p. 1). The pilots missed so many cues or red flags, when acting upon any one of these most likely would have prevented such a disaster. I have had personal experiences with confirmation bias in my life. Years ago, before cell phones, my husband, kids and I visited my parents at their condominium at a set time. When finding them not at home, we looked through windows and noticed everything looked different, knocked many times, then, left. We called them from a gas station and Pop answered the phone telling us they were there the entire time! We all failed to realize the entire time, even with the cues; we had been knocking at the wrong door!  My pop never failed to remind us of this; being a scientist, he found it quite funny.
 

I had never heard of this bias before this crash, but made the connection, or assimilated new information, as I watched Malcolm Gladwell’s videos about his book Outliers (2008), which mentioned his theory about cockpit culture possibly being responsible for some plane crashes, in particular Korean airlines. I was thinking about whether or not this deferential respect toward superiors could have played a role in the flight 5191 crash. Noted during the investigation, was that while approaching the runway, the co-pilot mentioned that the runway’s lights were out, and the pilot did not seem to consider that observation as an issue, thus they continued down the wrong runway. Was the pilot so convinced of his location that he dismissed the possibility of being on the wrong runway, and the co-pilot did not feel he could push the issue if he felt dismissed?

My article connects to learning because, the pilots of 5191 did not process the input, or data, in terms three critical characteristics, clarity and complexity, prior knowledge, and time, according to the two MEMORY power point lectures. This resulted in the death of 49 crash victims. They were so sure of their prior knowledge in that environment, that when faced with cue after cue warning them that they needed to accommodate the new information, they chose to ignore it, possibly due to confirmation bias. The pilots’ initially boarded the wrong Comair plane docked in the adjacent terminal. Made aware of their error, they got off the first, and boarded the correct plane. This effected their time forcing them to hurry their safety and procedural checks before takeoff. The diagrams and designs of the complicated airport runways, which had temporarily changed due to construction, had either not been provided to, or read by, the pilots, thus there was no clear understanding that they were set to take off from the wrong runway. Even when faced with the fact that, visually, the runway had no lights, pointed out by the co-pilot, neither pilots’ sensory registers were triggered to assimilate, accommodate, pause, reevaluate, and organized this new information. James (1899/2001) may have referred to this tendency to "leave the old undisturbed" in the mind as "old fogyism" (p. 78). If the controller had taken the time to visually, check the position of the plane to verify it was on the correct runway, before giving them the okay to take off, as teachers check students’ understanding of information to be sure they are on the right path, lives could have been saved. This article made me realize that as teachers, our students may be experiencing confirmation bias, disguised as misconception, and they may not be receiving input, assimilating nor accommodating new information, because they feel so sure of their existing knowledge, that they feel no need to update data.