Plain English Meaning
Getting stuck staring at one thing and missing everything else going on around you.
Full Definition
In aviation training and human factors, fixating is the act of locking attention onto a single object, instrument, task, or problem to the exclusion of other important information. It is a recognized attention error that degrades situational awareness and is treated as a learning and performance problem to be identified and corrected.
Context Anchor
Seen in aviation instruction when discussing student errors, cockpit scanning, decision-making, and loss of awareness during flight.