I enjoy the concept of the cognition-oriented skills impacting memory-retention, retention quality, and some combination of assessment speed / accuracy -- especially when the design space both allows a luck stat (direct or comparative) to shake the equation a bit and enables complexity like having the OTHER creature's skills influencing the assessment / retention-quality. For that latter, I think of the various "mimic" creatures that spend effort towards fooling their observer ... as well as your traditional "lure" creatures such as Anglers, various snakes, and bird-call-imitators.
Viewing post in Tech Post #2 - Sight and Memory comments
It's important that the threat assessment portion IS in fact an estimate, specifically so creatures/players can utilize it as you said. Players/ creatures that want to be ignored can have the ability to reduce their threat initially, and their real threat is only realized too late. On the flip side, "tanky" players can artificially increase their perceived threat in order to draw extra attention to themselves (or attempt to scare the creature off).