Many of them know the checklists for their model of aircraft. The downside of the checklists is that they sometimes explain the "what" and not the "why". They are supposed to be taught the why in their simulator training. Newer aircraft are going even further in that direction of obfuscation to the pilots. I expect future aircraft to even perform automated incident checklist actions. To your point, not everyone follows the checklists when they are having an incident as the FDR often reports.