Six barriers of Situational Awareness:

1. Multitasking: Being under the delusion that the brain can give
conscious attention to two or more tasks simultaneously (which is
biologically impossible).
2. Mission Myopia: Being so dedicated to the mission that (1)
critical clues and cues are missed, (2) critical clues and cues are
captured but not understood, or (3) critical clues and cues are
captured, understood, but completely ignored.
3. Urgency: Feeling so compelled to perform a task with expediency
that time is not taken to capture information that forms
situational awareness.
4. Time Distortion: Under stress, it can be very difficult to keep
track of the passage of time. This can lead to crews operating in
environments longer than they should be there because the
passage of time is being distorted.
5. Over Confidence: The phenomenon where one’s subjective
confidence in ability or judgment exceeds reality. This can cause
someone to ignore clues that indicate they are heading toward
trouble.
6. Complacency: Letting down the guard causes a drop in vigilance
and this can cause a responder to miss seeing, hearing or feeling
critical clues and cues.
7. Short Term Memory Overload: The average person can only
perceive, comprehend and recall about seven pieces of unrelated
information in the short-term memory buffer. After that, the
person is subject to forgetting and, under stress, the brain isn’t
very good at prioritizing what information is important and what
isn’t.
8. Confabulation: The brain can make up
information. In the absence of a complete, coherent
understanding of what is happening, the brain can “fill in” the
missing information with made-up information. When this
happens, you’ll have no idea your brain just lied to you.
9. Distractions: Attention is easily distracted. While operating in
environments where there are loud noises, bright lights, flame,
smoke, radio traffic, moving people and apparatus, it provides a
cornucopia of distractions. And, for so much as you’ll want to pay
attention to the important things, the more dynamic the
environment, the more vulnerable you are to distraction.