cognitive tunneling
a psychological state, typical of people concentrating on a demanding task or operating under conditions of stress, in which a single, narrowly defined category of information is attended to and processed. Cognitive tunneling involves the processing of highly critical task-relevant information, with limited or no processing of secondary information that may also be important to the task. For example, cognitive tunneling occurs when a pilot focuses on the head-up displays without also scanning out the windows of the plane. Compare social tunneling.