Error is the inevitable and acceptable price we must pay to quickly and effectively manage difficult executions. If it is impossible to guarantee error elimination, then we should discover ways to mitigate its consequences says psychologist James Reason, a specialist in human error, and proposes classifying them into different levels:
- At skill level, our performance would be guided by patterns stored with instructions programmed within spatiotemporal structures in ‘autopilot’ mode. Skill-based performance represents sensorimotor execution that tends to be harmonious and automatic. At this level, errors come from the difference between our current state and our intended state due to variables of forces, space, and time coordination, and from inattention (omissions) or excessive attention (repetitions).
- At the normative level, our executions in a familiar environment are governed by ‘rules’ or behavioral procedures for executing certain actions. When changes in the environment prevent the application of our skills, then memorized rules for dealing with the situation are learned through instruction received from others. At this level, our errors are made when the wrong rule is used, when the correct rule is not remembered, or on the basis of “if-then” rules, where ‘if’ refers to the diagnosis of a situation and ‘then’ to the action to correct it (e.g., if visibility is poor, then slow down). At this level, our mistakes are usually due to misremembering a procedure. Of course, the expert skier has more rules available to solve situational problems than the beginner.
- Errors at the knowledge level generally occur in new situations in which our actions are planned using analytical processes and stored knowledge. At this level, our errors take place due to our wrong mental images, limited resources, incomplete or incorrect knowledge, excessive cognitive load, or external constraints. A ‘discovery-by-itself’ response applies here.
For example, when passing through an icy area, a skill error would be not being able to maintain balance, a normative error would be not applying the rule that on compacted surfaces friction decreases causing more sliding, and a knowledge error would be not knowing how to distinguish ice or not realizing that skis are more difficult to control in that condition.
Errors at these three levels can vary both intrinsically (attentional limitations, cognitive biases) and extrinsically (performance characteristic or environmental effects). While skill and normative errors may be more numerous than knowledge errors, all three types can coexist at any given time.
Changes are a common source of error. These occur because of a deviation from known actions or because of modifications in the conditions under which our executions are performed. When changing the conditions of motor executions, our errors would arise because our failures in the control of intention, failure to remember changes in the environment, or because the knowledge of these changes was not assessed at the appropriate time.
Changes in the environment that we didn’t anticipate induce knowledge errors or normative errors manifested in novice situations in which we did not have a contingency plan. This is usually due to our tendency to prefer to act in a context with recognizable patterns rather than trying to calculate or optimize executions.
Post-error slowdown
Skiing requires making quick and efficient decisions in the face of various stimuli that are presented. These decisions depend on the speed of descent and the time interval between events. Our performance is slower and more prone to error as the availability of time to deal with events is reduced.
We generally tend to slow down after making a mistake, known as post-error slowing. This is due to the choice of a conservative execution strategy after experiencing a mistake, in addition to temporarily activating the monitoring of the mistake made. Although during this period we analyze discrepant information between the error made and the correct action, our performance tends to decrease. An intelligent option is, after making a mistake, focusing our attention on the next action, adjusting our performance more precisely.
The failed act
The failed act manifests itself in a verbal expression or in an action contrary to our own intention and which is not attributable to a particular cause. This term, introduced by Freud, is also known as “failed performance” or “failure in efficacy“.
It consists of a difference between the internal (the intention) and the external behavior (the action) in which we find that we did something opposite to what we wanted to do but do not know why. Finding an explanation for this phenomenon is somewhat complicated since it occurs outside the dimension of our consciousness.
