The Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) and its correlates

Abstract

This paper describes a questionnaire measure of self-reported failures in perception, memory, and motor function. Responses to all questions tend to be positively correlated, and the whole questionnaire correlates with other recent measures of self-reported deficit in memory, absentmindedness, or slips of action. The questionnaire is however only weakly correlated with indices of social desirability set or of neuroticism. It is significantly correlated with ratings of the respondent by his or her spouse, and accordingly does have some external significance rather than purely private opinion of the self. The score is reasonably stable over long periods, to about the same extent as traditional measures of trait rather than state. Furthermore, it has not thus far been found to change in persons exposed to life-stresses. However, it does frequently correlate with the number of current psychiatric symptoms reported by the same person on the MHQ; and in one study it has been found that CFQ predicts subsequent MHQ in persons who work at a stressful job in the interval. It does not d o so in those who work in a less stressful environment. The most plausible view is that cognitive failure makes a person vulnerable to showing bad effects of stress, rather than itself resulting from stress.During the past few years a considerable amount of interest has developed in the assessment of minor everyday slips or errors. This interest is perhaps due more to the work of Reason (1977Reason ( , 1979 than of any other single individual; starting from the analysis of accident reports, he has progressed to the recording of bizarre episodes of 'absentmindedness' in diaries kept during everyday life, and to general questionnaires of the frequency with which such episodes are reported by individuals. The lapses which have interested him can be typified by the pilot who sets his course by the wrong end of the compass needle, or who closes down the suruiuing engine when one fails; or who forgets to change fuel tanks. A particularly interesting detailed example is given by Ruffell-Smith (1979), of a flight engineer who repeatedly miscalculated the safe load of fuel to retain in a (simulated) aircraft during an emergency landing, and finally concluded that his instruments must be in error. Similar though less dramatic episodes occur to all of us during the average week; as the examples show, they may involve perceptual failures, or failures of memory, or actions which are misdirected. The common element is that there is a departure from the normal smooth flow of function, and events do not proceed in accordance with intention. The situation is rather different from the failures of ability which again we all reach at our limits, and which may arise at quite low levels of difficulty for some individuals. In the lapses we are now discussing, the ability is certainly present and the functions may on other occasions be regarded as laughably simple; but they do sometimes fail.Quite apart from the initiative of Reason, there are practical and theore...

Absent-mindedness: Lapses of conscious awareness and everyday cognitive failures

“…The strong correlation between the MFS and the ARCES is, however, consistent with the assumption that everyday cognitive errors are multiply determined (cf. Broadbent et al, 1982), even when primarily attentional in origin. This finding is also consistent with the hypothesis that at least some memory problems may be the consequence of attention lapses at the time of encoding.…”

“…For instance, people who report a high frequency of cognitive failures (i.e., have high CFQ scores) tend to be more likely to cause automobile accidents than are people reporting a low degree of cognitive failures (e.g., Larson & Merritt, 1991;Larson, Alderton, Neideffer, & Underhill, 1997). The CFQ also predicts how people cope with stress in their work environment (Broadbent et al, 1982). Some evidence that the CFQ is correlated, inter alia, with attention-related errors comes from studies showing that the CFQ correlates with overt behavioral measures of attention (e.g., Robertson, Manly, Andrade, Baddeley, & Yiend, 1997;Tipper & Baylis, 1987).…”

Change detection in urban and rural driving scenes: Effects of target type and safety relevance on change blindness

“…Participants completed a brief demographic questionnaire and two self-report inventories, the 212 Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ; Lajunen et al, 2004;Lawton et al, 1997;Mattsson, 2012) 213 and the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ; Broadbent et al, 1982). 214…”

“…Originally it 224 was claimed that the scale measured a unitary construct, with specific subfactors varying between 225 populations (Broadbent et al, 1982). Subsequent studies have found that multi-factor solutions fit the 226 data better than single-factor solutions (Bridger et al, 2013;Wallace, 2004); however, the specific 227 factor structure varies between populations and even within populations over time (Bridger et al, 228 2013).…”

Awareness of deficits in traumatic brain injury: A multidimensional approach to assessing metacognitive knowledge and online-awareness

“…Executive Functions: Verbal Fluency-FAS test (Spreen & Benton, 1969;Spreen & Strauss, 1998); Revised Strategy Application Task (R-SAT) (Levine et al, 2000). Self-Report Measures: Patient Competency Rating Scale (PCRS) , Frontal Systems Behavioral Scale (FrSBe) (Grace & Malloy, 2002), Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) (Broadbent et al, 1982), and Measure of Empathic Tendency (MET) (Mehrabian & Epstein, 1972).…”