In an article titled Natural Disasters Influence Mental Mistakes, the site PychCentral provides a short account of a sessiion on Human Cognitive Performance Suffers Following National Disasters, delivered at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society; February 2012.
The Society has provided an abstract: Human Factors article. Note that the sample size is quite small, but perhaps more research will be done on this topic in the future. Some excerpts from the news article follow:
A new study finds that survivors of natural disasters may experience intellectual challenges in addition to stress and anxiety. This mental decline may cause survivors to make serious errors in their daily lives.
Experts say attention to these phenomena is important given the prevalence of hurricanes, tornados and earthquakes.
The study on how cognitive performance can decline after earthquakes is published by New Zealand researchers in the journal Human Factors.
In the report, University of Canterbury’s William S. Helton and James Head discuss how prior studies have found that more traffic accidents and accident-related fatalities occur following human-made disasters such as the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Experts believe the mishaps are due to increased cognitive impairment that can lead to higher stress levels and an increase in intrusive thoughts. However, until this time, no research has been conducted on the effects of natural disasters on cognitive performance.
Recovery Diva 
Hello Art: thanks for the insightful comments.
The study is worrisome because it has such a small sample. The topic does need more attention.
Claire
It’s a bit of a truism of emergency response that “stress makes you stupid.” Good to see that addressed in more rigorous terms!
However, we may want to keep an eye on how these findings are used, especially when they’re reduced to PowerPoint bullets. It might be tempting for some to adopt them as a rationale for elitism and/or paternalism.
We’ll need to bear in mind that, a) responders, disaster managers and senior officials are subject to the same psychological effects, and b) our task is to support and restore the competency of disaster survivors, not to substitute our own.
This is a great article.
Thanks for sharing Claire.