Momentary lapse of control: A cognitive continuum approach to understanding and mitigating perseveration in human error

Abstract

Everyday complex and stressful real-life situations can overwhelm the human brain to an extent that the person is no longer able to accurately evaluate the situation and persists in irrational actions or strategies. Safety analyses reveal that such perseverative behavior is exhibited by operators in many critical domains, which can lead to potentially fatal incidents. There are neuroimaging evidences of changes in healthy brain functioning when engaged in non-adaptive behaviors that are akin to executive deficits such as perseveration shown in patients with brain lesion. In this respect, we suggest a cognitive continuum whereby stressors can render the healthy brain temporarily impaired. We show that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is a key structure for executive and attentional control whereby any transient (stressors, neurostimulation) or permanent (lesion) impairment compromises adaptive behavior. Using this neuropsychological insight, we discuss solutions involving training, neurostimulation, and the design of cognitive countermeasures for mitigating perseveration.

A Neuroergonomics Approach to Mental Workload, Engagement and Human Performance

“…It has been demonstrated that individuals with greater information processing capacity (i.e., higher working memory span) exhibit superior ability with respect to divided and sustained attention (Colflesh and Conway, 2007;Unsworth and Engle, 2007), and therefore, should be less susceptible to the effects of inattention during the performance of demanding tasks. However, this hypothesis is contradicted by the absence of any correlation between individual differences in processing capacity and the occurrence of inattentional blindness (Bredemeier and Simons, 2012;Beanland and Chan, 2016;Kreitz et al, 2016a) or deafness (Kreitz et al, 2016b;Dehais et al, 2019).…”

“…Similarly, the occurrence of stressful and unexpected operational scenarios is known to impair executive functioning and provoke perseveration, see Dehais et al (2019) for review. Perseveration is defined as a tendency to continue an action after cessation of the original stimulation, which is no longer relevant to the goal at hand (Sandson and Albert, 1984).…”

“…The same mechanism can also take place via top-down regulation, known as inhibitory control, wherein high-level cortical areas (e.g., prefrontal cortex) reduce task-or stimulus-irrelevant neural activities (Munakata et al, 2011). However, these inhibitory mechanisms can also curtail the capacity of the brain to consider new or alternative information, thus leading to perseveration (Dehais et al, 2019).…”

“…In modern times, it manifests itself as a process of defaulting to well-learned behaviors, which are effective for only operational situations that are simple and familiar. This is the mechanism that promotes perseveration (Dehais et al, 2019) in task scenarios that are complex and novel (Staal, 2004;Ellenbogen et al, 2006) or offer intrinsic, short-term rewards, e.g., landing at all costs after a long transatlantic flight (Causse et al, 2013). These fundamental neurological mechanisms illustrate that impaired operational performance cannot be simply explained in terms of limited resources, such as a concentration of dopamine, but must be viewed from a neuroergonomic perspective that emphasizes the complexity of interactions between brain areas that evolved over thousands of years.…”

“…measures in the laboratory and the field. Monitoring the activation and deactivation of the DLPFC represents a promising generic avenue to predict impaired performance across diverse states such as: mind wandering (Christoff et al, 2009;Harrivel et al, 2013), effort withdrawal (Ayaz et al, 2007;Izzetoglu et al, 2007;Durantin et al, 2014;Modi et al, 2018;Fairclough et al, 2018Fairclough et al, , 2019 and perseveration (Dehais et al, 2019). However, other neurological networks and sites should be considered as part of this analysis.…”