It was early in the 1970s during my initial CFI checkride when the FAA inspector asked for a departure stall demonstration. I obliged. Just as the stall was about to break, the inspector sneakily pushed the left rudder pedal to the floor. The airplane went over on its back and began to spin.
In a mental fog of my own making, I sat motionless, doing nothing. After one full rotation it hit me. Spin! I recovered from the spin but remained nonplussed at my inability to recognize what had just happened to me.
My experience can be traced to a theory in psychology known as state-dependent learning. The theory posits that we retrieve memories more effectively when we are in the same state of consciousness that existed when those memories were formed.
For instance, suppose you learn something while under the influence of caffeine. This theory suggests that you’ll be more likely to recall that information after consuming caffeine. When molecules flowing through our veins (caffeine, alcohol, adrenaline, et cetera) change our state of consciousness, they also change the way our neural pathways code memories. To have immediate and full access to those memories, we need to return to that same mental state.
For instance, suppose you learn stall/spin recovery techniques in a relatively relaxed mental state. Now release adrenaline into your veins by having Ned the Fed shock you by unexpectedly placing the airplane into a spin. You’re now in a highly aroused emotional state (who wouldn’t be?), which makes access to your stall/spin recovery memories (skills) less efficient.
As a flight instructor, you probably see the contradiction this theory presents when training student pilots. On one hand, you want to keep the anxiety level low during stall practice. On the other, if your students learn spin recovery behavior in this emotional state, they might be less likely to behave properly when they unexpectedly stall or spin an airplane (a different state of consciousness). What’s a CFI to do?
My suggestion is to purposely and responsibly incorporate a higher state of arousal in the latter part of a student’s stall/spin training (do this after the student has learned the basics of stall recovery). You can do this by using a technique known as "induced arousal."
One way to induce arousal is to climb to 3,000 feet agl, then have your student begin a power-off descent to 2,000 feet agl (or whatever altitude you feel is safe and appropriate here). Inform the student that, upon reaching 2,000 feet, he is to level off and hold altitude for 30 seconds using the elevator only, and no power.
Whenever I ask a student to do this, he invariably focuses on the clock and altimeter to the exclusion of the stall horn and the assorted pre-stall warning clues. The most common response produced by this demonstration is a nearly immobile student—one who sits there holding the yoke aft while the airplane performs a few falling-leaf type stalls. It only takes one or two of these demonstrations to broaden the emotional range of your student’s stall recovery behavior if and when a stall occurs in the real world.
There are many other ways to induce arousal without scaring your students (please don’t scare your students). For instance, have your student begin a steep turn at 45 degrees of bank and change the direction of turn every 15 seconds. Start this maneuver at 10 knots above the stall speed for 45 degrees of bank. Instruct him to reduce power by 100 rpm every time he changes the direction of turn. The idea is to distract him so that he doesn’t pay attention to the stall clues he’d typically recognize under non-aroused conditions. If you set this up properly, your student won’t see the stall coming. Let his post-stall response (or lack of it) play out as long as necessary for him to see how he behaves in his current emotional state. Years ago NASA did a study suggesting that in 75 percent of the stall/spin accidents where the pilot survived, he didn’t recall hearing the stall horn. It’s reasonable to posit that the pilot’s state of consciousness at the time of the stall (think adrenaline rush here) might have diminished his full and immediate access to his stall recovery memories—memories possibly learned under less-aroused conditions.
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