RESUMO
TheoryIn Medicine, arriving at the correct diagnosis is of paramount importance for patient health and safety, yet is a difficult task especially when a patient presents with symptoms that do not fit typical patterns of disease. This task can be further complicated by errors of judgment, with the failure to consider all possible diagnoses being the most common of such errors. In this study, we investigated the process of differential diagnosis generation within the growing evidence that diagnostic performance can be increased by activities such as walking as was previously shown in Oppezzo and Schwartz's 2014 study. Hypotheses: It was hypothesized that an increase in performance, as expressed by a greater number of plausible differential diagnoses, would be seen in the walking group. Method: Eighteen medical students in their last two months of pre-clerkship training and eighteen second year family medicine residents were shown four different lists of a constellation of signs and symptoms. Participants were asked to generate differential diagnoses over five minutes per each list. All participants sat when completing the first two lists (pretest phase), and then were equally and randomly assigned to sitting versus walking on a treadmill when completing the last two lists (post-test phase). The number of total and unique differential diagnoses generated was determined, before being submitted to a three-member expert panel who identified appropriate unique differential diagnoses. Results: Two-way mixed ANOVAs were conducted to investigate the impact of exercise on the number of total, unique, and appropriate unique ideas generated and compared between pretest and post-test phases. Conclusions: We conclude that there is neither an increase nor a decrease in the number or quality of differential diagnoses generated by the sitting and walking groups within a population that has acquired some level of expertise.
Assuntos
Estudantes de Medicina , Diagnóstico Diferencial , Humanos , Julgamento , CaminhadaRESUMO
The use of walking workstations in educational and work settings has been shown to improve cognitive abilities. At the same time, it has been repeatedly shown that medical residents around the world do not meet exercise guidelines, mainly due to a scarcity of available free time. Our study investigates the boundaries of the previously observed phenomenon of improved cognitive performance with physical activity using materials that represent real life tasks. Participants had different level of expertise and involved second year psychology students, medical students, and family medicine residents. We examined the effect of being physically inactive (i.e., sitting) or active (i.e., walking) while diagnosing multiple complex presentations of four skin conditions. We assumed that being physically active, irrespective of the level of expertise, will bolster diagnostic performance. Our findings show, however, that being physically active does not change the performance level of participants with different levels of medical expertise. Implications for medical education and suggestions for further research will be discussed.
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Educação Médica , Estudantes de Medicina , Humanos , CaminhadaRESUMO
Medical schools all over the world select applicants using non-cognitive and cognitive criteria. The predictive value of these different types of selection criteria has however never been investigated within the same curriculum while using a control group. We therefore set up a study that enabled us to compare the academic performance of three different admission groups, all composed of school-leaver entry students, and all enrolled in the same Bachelor curriculum: students selected on non-cognitive criteria, students selected on cognitive criteria and students admitted by lottery. First-year GPA and number of course credits (ECTS) at 52 weeks after enrollment of non-cognitive selected students (N = 102), cognitive selected students (N = 92) and lottery-admitted students (N = 356) were analyzed. In addition, chances of dropping out, probability of passing the third-year OSCE, and completing the Bachelor program in 3 years were compared. Although there were no significant differences between the admission groups in first-year GPA, cognitive selected students had obtained significantly more ECTS at 52 weeks and dropped out less often than lottery-admitted students. Probabilities of passing the OSCE and completing the bachelor program in 3 years did not significantly differ between the groups. These findings indicate that the use of only non-cognitive selection criteria is not sufficient to select the best academically performing students, most probably because a minimal cognitive basis is needed to succeed in medical school.
Assuntos
Avaliação Educacional , Critérios de Admissão Escolar , Faculdades de Medicina , Humanos , Países Baixos , Estudantes de Medicina/psicologiaRESUMO
Society expects physicians to always improve their competencies and to be up to date with developments in their field. Therefore, an important aim of medical schools is to educate future medical doctors to become self-regulated, lifelong learners. However, it is unclear if medical students become better self-regulated learners during the pre-clinical stage of medical school, and whether students develop self-regulated learning skills differently, dependent on the educational approach of their medical school. In a cross-sectional design, we investigated the development of 384 medical students' self-regulated learning skills with the use of the Self-Regulation of Learning Self-Report Scale. Next, we compared this development in students who enrolled in two distinct medical curricula: a problem-based curriculum and a lectured-based curriculum. Analysis showed that more skills decreased than increased during the pre-clinical stage of medical school, and that the difference between the curricula was mainly caused by a decrease in the skill evaluation in the lecture-based curriculum. These findings seem to suggest that, irrespective of the curriculum, self-regulated learning skills do not develop during medical school.
Assuntos
Currículo , Educação de Graduação em Medicina , Aprendizagem , Aprendizagem Baseada em Problemas , Estudantes de Medicina , Adolescente , Adulto , Brasil , Competência Clínica , Estudos Transversais , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Inquéritos e Questionários , Adulto JovemRESUMO
CONTENT: Medical schools aim to graduate medical doctors who are able to self-regulate their learning. It is therefore important to investigate whether medical students' self-regulated learning skills change during medical school. In addition, since these skills are expected to be helpful to learn more effectively, it is of interest to investigate whether these skills are related to academic performance. METHODS: In a cross-sectional design, the Self-Regulation of Learning Self-Report Scale (SRL-SRS) was used to investigate the change in students' self-regulated learning skills. First and third-year students (N = 949, 81.7%) SRL-SRS scores were compared with ANOVA. The relation with academic performance was investigated with multinomial regression analysis. RESULTS: Only one of the six skills, reflection, significantly, but positively, changed during medical school. In addition, a small, but positive relation of monitoring, reflection, and effort with first-year GPA was found, while only effort was related to third-year GPA. CONCLUSIONS: The change in self-regulated learning skills is minor as only the level of reflection differs between the first and third year. In addition, the relation between self-regulated learning skills and academic performance is limited. Medical schools are therefore encouraged to re-examine the curriculum and methods they use to enhance their students' self-regulated learning skills. Future research is required to understand the limited impact on performance.
Assuntos
Logro , Educação Médica/organização & administração , Aprendizagem , Autocontrole , Adolescente , Estudos Transversais , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Autoeficácia , Adulto JovemRESUMO
OBJECTIVE: General guidelines for teaching clinical reasoning have received much attention, despite a paucity of instructional approaches with demonstrated effectiveness. As suggested in a recent experimental study, self-explanation while solving clinical cases may be an effective strategy to foster reasoning in clinical clerks dealing with less familiar cases. However, the mechanisms that mediate this benefit have not been specifically investigated. The aim of this study was to explore the types of knowledge used by students when solving familiar and less familiar clinical cases with self-explanation. METHODS: In a previous study, 36 third-year medical students diagnosed familiar and less familiar clinical cases either by engaging in self-explanation or not. Based on an analysis of previously collected data, the present study compared the content of self-explanation protocols generated by seven randomly selected students while solving four familiar and four less familiar cases. In total, 56 verbal protocols (28 familiar and 28 less familiar) were segmented and coded using the following categories: paraphrases, biomedical inferences, clinical inferences, monitoring statements and errors. RESULTS: Students provided more self-explanation segments from less familiar cases (M = 275.29) than from familiar cases (M = 248.71, p = 0.046). They provided significantly more paraphrases (p = 0.001) and made more errors (p = 0.008). A significant interaction was found between familiarity and the type of inferences (biomedical versus clinical, p = 0.016). When self-explaining less familiar cases, students provided significantly more biomedical inferences than familiar cases. CONCLUSIONS: Lack of familiarity with a case seems to stimulate medical students to engage in more extensive thinking during self-explanation. Less familiar cases seem to activate students' biomedical knowledge, which in turn helps them to create new links between biomedical and clinical knowledge, and eventually construct a more coherent mental representation of diseases. This may clarify the previously found positive effect that self-explanation has on the diagnosis of unfamiliar cases.
Assuntos
Educação de Graduação em Medicina/métodos , Conhecimento , Aprendizagem Baseada em Problemas/métodos , Estudantes de Medicina/psicologia , Humanos , Aprendizagem , Resolução de ProblemasRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Learning physical examination skills is an essential element of medical education. Teaching strategies include practicing the skills either alone or in-group. It is unclear whether students benefit more from training these skills individually or in a group, as the latter allows them to observing their peers. The present study, conducted in a naturalistic setting, investigated the effects of peer observation on mastering psychomotor skills necessary for physical examination. METHODS: The study included 185 2nd-year medical students, participating in a regular head-to-toe physical examination learning activity. Students were assigned either to a single-student condition (n = 65), in which participants practiced alone with a patient instructor, or to a multiple-student condition (n = 120), in which participants practiced in triads under patient instructor supervision. The students subsequently carried out a complete examination that was videotaped and subsequently evaluated. Student's performance was used as a measure of learning. RESULTS: Students in the multiple-student condition learned more than those who practiced alone (81% vs 76%, p < 0.004). This result possibly derived from a positive effect of observing peers; students who had the possibility to observe a peer (the second and third students in the groups) performed better than students who did not have this possibility (84% vs 76%, p <. 001). There was no advantage of observing more than one peer (83.7% vs 84.1%, p > .05). CONCLUSIONS: The opportunity to observe a peer during practice seemed to improve the acquisition of physical examination skills. By using small groups instead of individual training to teach physical examination skills, health sciences educational programs may provide students with opportunities to improve their performance by learning from their peers through modelling.
Assuntos
Educação de Graduação em Medicina/métodos , Exame Físico , Competência Clínica/normas , Educação de Graduação em Medicina/normas , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Grupo Associado , Exame Físico/métodos , Exame Físico/normas , Estudantes de Medicina , Adulto JovemRESUMO
OBJECTIVES: Developing diagnostic competence in students is a major goal of medical education, but there is little empirical evidence on instructional strategies that foster the acquisition of this competence. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of structured reflection compared with the generation of immediate or differential diagnosis while practising with clinical cases on learning clinical diagnosis. METHODS: This was a three-phase experimental study. During a learning phase, 46 Year 4 students diagnosed six clinical cases under different experimental conditions: structured reflection, immediate diagnosis, or differential diagnosis. This was followed by an immediate test and a delayed test administered 1 week later. Each test consisted of diagnosing four different cases of diseases presented in the learning phase. Performance in diagnosing these new cases was used as a measure of learning. RESULTS: Repeated-measures analysis of variance on the mean diagnostic accuracy scores (range: 0-1) showed a significant interaction between performance moment (i.e. performance in the learning phase and on each test) and instructions followed during the learning phase (p=0.003). Follow-up analyses of this interaction showed that diagnostic performance did not differ between conditions in the learning phase. On the immediate test, scores in the reflection condition (mean=0.48, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.38-0.58) were significantly lower than scores in the differential diagnosis condition (mean=0.62, 95% CI 0.54-0.70; p=0.012) and marginally lower than those in the immediate diagnosis condition (mean=0.61, 95% CI 0.52-0.70; p=0.04). One week later, however, scores in the reflection condition (mean=0.66, 95% CI 0.56-0.76) significantly outperformed those in the other conditions (differential diagnosis: mean=0.48, 95% CI 0.37-0.58 [p<0.01]; immediate diagnosis: mean=0.52, 95% CI 0.43-0.60 [p=0.01]). Comparisons within experimental conditions showed that performance from the immediate to the delayed test decreased in the immediate and differential diagnosis conditions (immediate diagnosis: p=0.042; differential diagnosis: p=0.012), but increased in the reflection condition (p=0.003). CONCLUSIONS: Structured reflection while practising with cases appears to foster the learning of clinical knowledge more effectively than the generation of immediate or differential diagnoses and therefore seems to be an effective instructional approach to developing diagnostic competence in students.
Assuntos
Competência Clínica/normas , Técnicas e Procedimentos Diagnósticos , Educação de Graduação em Medicina/métodos , Avaliação Educacional/métodos , Adulto , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Adulto JovemRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Psychological research has shown that people tend toward accepting rather than refuting hypotheses. Diagnostic suggestions may evoke such confirmatory tendencies in physicians, which may lead to diagnostic errors. PURPOSE: This study investigated the influence of a suggested diagnosis on physicians' diagnostic decisions on written clinical cases. It was hypothesized that physicians would tend to go along with the suggestions and therefore would have more difficulty rejecting incorrect suggestions than accepting correct suggestions. METHODS: Residents (N = 24) had to accept or reject suggested diagnoses on 6 cases. Three of those suggested diagnoses were correct, and 3 were incorrect. RESULTS: Results showed the mean correct evaluation score on cases with a correct suggested diagnosis (M = 2.21, SD = 0.88) was significantly higher than the score on cases with an incorrect suggested diagnosis (M = 1.42, SD = 0.97), meaning physicians indeed found it easier to accept correct diagnoses than to reject incorrect diagnoses, t(23) = 2.74, p < .05, d = .85, despite equal experience with the diagnoses. CONCLUSION: These findings indicate that suggested diagnoses may evoke confirmatory tendencies and consequently may lead to diagnostic errors.
Assuntos
Erros de Diagnóstico , Internato e Residência , Sugestão , Diagnóstico Diferencial , Feminino , Humanos , Medicina Interna , Masculino , Países BaixosRESUMO
CONTEXT: Studies in medical expertise have shown that the medical knowledge of physicians is organized in a way that is easily retrievable when they encounter patients. These knowledge structures, called illness scripts, contain various pieces of information, including signs, symptoms, and enabling conditions, concerning a given disease. Illness script research has principally focused on understanding how physicians make diagnoses, while patient management has received much less attention. Although the work on diagnostics has taught us many things about the nature of medical expertise, focusing solely on this aspect provides only a narrow perspective on the subject, resulting in an incomplete depiction of medical experts. The goal of the present study was to experimentally determine how management knowledge plays a role in the development of illness scripts and developing expertise. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Medical students, interns, and residents were instructed to think aloud while reading a case with either a diagnostic or management focus. The recall protocols were examined in terms of illness script components, as well as diagnostic and management accuracy. FINDINGS: Both residents and interns were sensitive to the focus and generated significantly more management-items when thinking about management than when they were asked to diagnose a clinical case. They also provided more management items than medical students in management-focus. The performance of interns was superficially similar to that of residents in terms of management proportion, but with respect to both diagnostic and management accuracy they resembled medical students. Medical students, in contrast, were very persistent and insensitive to the focus. CONCLUSIONS: Medical expertise could be characterized by the emergence of illness scripts that are rich in terms of management knowledge. Illness scripts can generally be applied to any medical encounter that includes diagnosis and management, and expertise research should be extended to cover both domains.
Assuntos
Competência Clínica , Diagnóstico , Competência Clínica/normas , Educação Médica/normas , Humanos , Internato e Residência/normas , Estudantes de Medicina/psicologiaRESUMO
BACKGROUND: To date, studies that have investigated the bonds between students and their institution have emphasized the importance of student-staff relationships. Measuring the quality of those relationships (i.e., relationship quality) appears to help with investigating the relational ties students have with their higher education institutions. Growing interest has arisen in further investigating relationship quality in higher education, as it might predict students' involvement with the institution (e.g., student engagement and student loyalty). So far, most studies have used a cross-sectional design, so that causality could not be determined. AIMS: The aim of this longitudinal study was twofold. First, we investigated the temporal ordering of the relation between the relationship quality dimensions of trust (in benevolence and honesty) and affect (satisfaction, affective commitment, and affective conflict). Second, we examined the ordering of the paths between relationship quality, student engagement, and student loyalty. Our objectives were to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship quality construct in higher education and its later outcomes. SAMPLE: Participants (N = 1649) were students from three Dutch higher education institutions who were studying in a technology economics or social sciences program. METHODS: Longitudinal data from two time points were used to evaluate two types of cross-lagged panel models. In the first analysis, we could not assume measurement invariance for affective conflict over time. Therefore, we tested an alternative model without affective conflict, using the latent variables of trust and affect, the student engagement dimensions and student loyalty. In the second type of model, we investigated the manifest variables of relationship quality, student engagement, and student loyalty. The hypotheses were tested by evaluating simultaneous comparisons between estimates. RESULTS: Results indicated that the relation between relationship quality at Time 1 with student engagement and loyalty at Time 2 was stronger than the reverse ordering in the first model. In the second model, results indicated that cross-lagged relations between trust in benevolence and trust in honesty at Time 1 and affective commitment, affective conflict, and satisfaction at Time 2 were more likely than the reverse ordering. Furthermore, cross-lagged relations from relationship quality at Time 1 to student engagement and student loyalty at Time 2 also supported our hypothesis. CONCLUSIONS: This study contributes to the existing higher education literature, indicating that students' trust in the quality of their relationship with faculty/staff is essential for developing students' affective commitment and satisfaction and for avoiding conflict over time. Second, relationship quality factors positively influence students' engagement in their studies and their loyalty towards the institution. A relational approach to establishing (long-lasting) bonds with students appears to be fruitful as an approach for educational psychologists and for practitioners' guidance and strategies. Recommendations are made for future research to further examine relationship quality in higher education in Europe and beyond.
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Instituições Acadêmicas , Estudantes , Estudos Transversais , Humanos , Estudos Longitudinais , Satisfação Pessoal , Estudantes/psicologiaRESUMO
Contrary to what common sense makes us believe, deliberation without attention has recently been suggested to produce better decisions in complex situations than deliberation with attention. Based on differences between cognitive processes of experts and novices, we hypothesized that experts make in fact better decisions after consciously thinking about complex problems whereas novices may benefit from deliberation-without-attention. These hypotheses were confirmed in a study among doctors and medical students. They diagnosed complex and routine problems under three conditions, an immediate-decision condition and two delayed conditions: conscious thought and deliberation-without-attention. Doctors did better with conscious deliberation when problems were complex, whereas reasoning mode did not matter in simple problems. In contrast, deliberation-without-attention improved novices' decisions, but only in simple problems. Experts benefit from consciously thinking about complex problems; for novices thinking does not help in those cases.
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Atenção , Estado de Consciência , Competência Profissional , Pensamento , Erros de Diagnóstico , HumanosRESUMO
CONTEXT: Diagnostic errors have been associated with bias in clinical reasoning. Empirical evidence on the cognitive mechanisms underlying biases and effectiveness of educational strategies to counteract them is lacking. OBJECTIVES: To investigate whether recent experience with clinical problems provokes availability bias (overestimation of the likelihood of a diagnosis based on the ease with which it comes to mind) resulting in diagnostic errors and whether reflection (structured reanalysis of the case findings) counteracts this bias. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Experimental study conducted in 2009 at the Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, with 18 first-year and 18 second-year internal medicine residents. Participants first evaluated diagnoses of 6 clinical cases (phase 1). Subsequently, they diagnosed 8 different cases through nonanalytical reasoning, 4 of which had findings similar to previously evaluated cases but different diagnoses (phase 2). These 4 cases were subsequently diagnosed again through reflective reasoning (phase 3). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Mean diagnostic accuracy scores (perfect score, 4.0) on cases solved with or without previous exposure to similar problems through nonanalytical (phase 2) or reflective (phase 3) reasoning and frequency that a potentially biased (ie, phase 1) diagnosis was given. RESULTS: There were no main effects, but there was a significant interaction effect between "years of training" and "recent experiences with similar problems." Results consistent with an availability bias occurred for the second-year residents, who scored lower on the cases similar to those previously encountered (1.55; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.15-1.96) than on the other cases (2.19; 95% CI, 1.73-2.66; P =.03). This pattern was not seen among the first-year residents (2.03; 95% CI, 1.55-2.51 vs 1.42; 95% CI, 0.92-1.92; P =.046). Second-year residents provided the phase 1 diagnosis more frequently for phase 2 cases they had previously encountered than for those they had not (mean frequency per resident, 1.44; 95% CI, 0.93-1.96 vs 0.72; 95% CI, 0.28-1.17; P =.04). A significant main effect of reasoning mode was found: reflection improved the diagnoses of the similar cases compared with nonanalytical reasoning for the second-year residents (2.03; 95% CI, 1.49-2.57) and the first-year residents (2.31; 95% CI, 1.89-2.73; P =.006). CONCLUSION: When faced with cases similar to previous ones and using nonanalytic reasoning, second-year residents made errors consistent with the availability bias. Subsequent application of diagnostic reflection tended to counter this bias; it improved diagnostic accuracy in both first- and second-year residents.
Assuntos
Cognição , Erros de Diagnóstico , Medicina Interna/educação , Internato e Residência , Testes Diagnósticos de Rotina , Humanos , Países Baixos , Variações Dependentes do Observador , Exame FísicoRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Constructivist views of learning have brought conceptions of learning to attention again. Conceptions are considered important determinants of effective learning. Students can differ in their conceptions depending on their educational experience. AIMS: The present study investigated students' conceptions of constructivist learning. Do students with greater experience in their academic programme differ in their conceptions of constructivist learning compared to students with less experience? In addition, to what extent are conceptions of constructivist learning different in a conventional, lecture-based curriculum compared to a constructivist, problem-based learning curriculum? SAMPLES: Three groups (i.e. first-year, second-year, and third-year students) in two different curricula (i.e. conventional, lecture-based and constructivist, problem-based) were tested. METHODS: A cross-sectional design was used. Students' conceptions of constructivist activities (i.e. knowledge construction, cooperative learning, self-regulation, use of authentic problems, self-perceived inability to learn, and motivation to learn) were measured by a questionnaire. Data were analyzed using a two-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). RESULTS: A significant difference in questionnaire's scores between year 1 and year 2 (but not between year 2 and 3) was found with respect to conceptions about knowledge construction, self-regulation, and the use of authentic problems, but not for cooperative learning and motivation to learn. For self-perceived inability, an interaction effect was found. Furthermore, results showed significant differences between both curriculum groups on all dependent measures. CONCLUSIONS: Differences in conceptions can be perceived between students who enter a new learning programme (i.e. higher education) and students who already have one year of experience in higher education. Among students with more than one year of educational experience, differences disappear. Furthermore, this study shows that the learning environment can make a difference with respect to students' conceptions of constructivist learning activities.
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Atitude , Aprendizagem Baseada em Problemas , Estudantes/psicologia , Adolescente , Fatores Etários , Estudos Transversais , Currículo , Feminino , Processos Grupais , Humanos , Masculino , Países Baixos , Resolução de Problemas , Psicologia/educação , Inquéritos e Questionários , Adulto JovemRESUMO
In this study, the longitudinal relation between deliberate practice and performance in chess was examined using a linear mixed models analysis. The practice activities and performance ratings of young elite chess players, who were either in, or had dropped out of the Dutch national chess training, were analysed since they had started playing chess seriously. The results revealed that deliberate practice (i.e. serious chess study alone and serious chess play) strongly contributed to chess performance. The influence of deliberate practice was not only observable in current performance, but also over chess players' careers. Moreover, although the drop-outs' chess ratings developed more slowly over time, both the persistent and drop-out chess players benefited to the same extent from investments in deliberate practice. Finally, the effect of gender on chess performance proved to be much smaller than the effect of deliberate practice. This study provides longitudinal support for the monotonic benefits assumption of deliberate practice, by showing that over chess players' careers, deliberate practice has a significant effect on performance, and to the same extent for chess players of different ultimate performance levels. The results of this study are not in line with critique raised against the deliberate practice theory that the factors deliberate practice and talent could be confounded.
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Jogos Experimentais , Motivação , Prática Psicológica , Evasão Escolar/psicologia , Logro , Adolescente , Criança , Comportamento Competitivo , Feminino , Humanos , Modelos Lineares , Estudos Longitudinais , Masculino , Países Baixos , Fatores Sexuais , Adulto JovemRESUMO
BACKGROUND: The testing effect is the finding that information that is retrieved during learning is more often correctly retrieved on a final test than information that is restudied. According to the semantic mediator hypothesis the testing effect arises because retrieval practice of cue-target pairs (mother-child) activates semantically related mediators (father) more than restudying. Hence, the mediator-target (father-child) association should be stronger for retrieved than restudied pairs. Indeed, Carpenter (2011) found a larger testing effect when participants received mediators (father) than when they received target-related words (birth) as final test cues. METHODS: The present study started as an attempt to test an alternative account of Carpenter's results. However, it turned into a series of conceptual (Experiment 1) and direct (Experiment 2 and 3) replications conducted with online samples. The results of these online replications were compared with those of similar existing laboratory experiments through small-scale meta-analyses. RESULTS: The results showed that (1) the magnitude of the raw mediator testing effect advantage is comparable for online and laboratory experiments, (2) in both online and laboratory experiments the magnitude of the raw mediator testing effect advantage is smaller than in Carpenter's original experiment, and (3) the testing effect for related cues varies considerably between online experiments. CONCLUSIONS: The variability in the testing effect for related cues in online experiments could point toward moderators of the related cue short-term testing effect. The raw mediator testing effect advantage is smaller than in Carpenter's original experiment.
Assuntos
Aprendizagem por Associação , Sinais (Psicologia) , Rememoração Mental , Prática Psicológica , Adulto , Idoso , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Modelos Psicológicos , Reprodutibilidade dos Testes , Retenção Psicológica , SemânticaRESUMO
PURPOSE: To examine four theories on the role of basic science knowledge and clinical knowledge in diagnostic reasoning. METHOD: In 2000-01, the authors tested the basic science and clinical knowledge and diagnostic performances of 59 family physicians and 184 second- to sixth-year medical students at Maastricht University, The Netherlands. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Four theoretical models were tested. In the first model only basic science knowledge is involved in diagnostic reasoning; in the second model only clinical knowledge is related to diagnostic reasoning; in the third model, clinical knowledge is related to diagnostic reasoning, but basic science knowledge is integrated in clinical knowledge; and in the fourth model, both basic science knowledge and clinical knowledge independently influence diagnostic reasoning. RESULTS: Forty-four (75%) of the family physicians and 184 (100%) of the students responded. The results indicated that the third model, which is based on the knowledge encapsulation theory, provided the best fit to the data, whereas the models that had directly related basic science knowledge with diagnostic performance did not fit the data adequately. CONCLUSION: The results generally supported the third model by Schmidt and Boshuizen of knowledge encapsulation theory suggesting that basic science knowledge is activated in expert diagnostic reasoning through its relation with clinical knowledge.
Assuntos
Competência Clínica/estatística & dados numéricos , Educação de Graduação em Medicina/métodos , Internato e Residência/estatística & dados numéricos , Conhecimento , Modelos Teóricos , Médicos de Família/educação , Ciência/educação , Estudantes de Medicina/estatística & dados numéricos , Cognição , Tomada de Decisões , Diagnóstico , Avaliação Educacional , Humanos , Internato e Residência/normas , Países Baixos , Médicos de Família/psicologia , Médicos de Família/normas , Estudantes de Medicina/psicologiaRESUMO
PURPOSE: To investigate the role of biomedical and diagnostic inferences in clinical reasoning of advanced medical students and experienced family physicians using a lexical decision task. METHOD: In 2002, 15 family physicians and 20 fourth-year medical students at Maastricht University medical school in The Netherlands were instructed to carefully study 60 short clinical texts consisting of signs and symptoms associated with a particular disease. Participants read the texts on a computer screen and responded using a computer keyboard. Each text was followed by a target item (i.e., biomedical item, diagnostic item, or a nonword). Participants had to decide as quickly and accurately as possible whether the presented target item was a word or a nonword. For both groups, mean response time and mean error rate for all levels of item type were analyzed. RESULTS: Findings indicate that both physicians and medical students judged diagnostic target items faster and more accurately than biomedical target items. However, physicians were considerably faster than were students on judging biomedical and diagnostic target items. CONCLUSIONS: These findings are largely in line with knowledge encapsulation in that biomedical knowledge still plays a prominent role in the physician's clinical reasoning.
Assuntos
Inteligência Artificial , Tecnologia Biomédica , Conhecimento , Adulto , Competência Clínica , Tomada de Decisões , Humanos , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Médicos de Família , Tempo de Reação , Estudantes de MedicinaRESUMO
The spacing effect refers to the finding that memory for repeated items improves when the interrepetition interval increases. To explain the spacing effect in free-recall tasks, a two-factor model has been put forward that combines mechanisms of contextual variability and study-phase retrieval (e.g., Raaijmakers, 2003; Verkoeijen, Rikers, & Schmidt, 2004). An important, yet untested, implication of this model is that free recall of repetitions should follow an inverted u-shaped relationship with interrepetition spacing. To demonstrate the suggested relationship an experiment was conducted. Participants studied a word list, consisting of items repeated at different interrepetition intervals, either under incidental or under intentional learn instructions. Subsequently, participants received a free-recall test. The results revealed an inverted u-shaped relationship between free recall and interrepetition spacing in both the incidental-learning condition and the intentional-learning condition. Moreover, for intentionally learned repetitions, the maximum free-recall performance was located at a longer interrepetition interval than for incidentally learned repetitions. These findings are interpreted in terms of the two-factor model of spacing effects in free-recall tasks.
Assuntos
Rememoração Mental , Percepção Espacial , Humanos , Intenção , Aprendizagem , Fatores de TempoRESUMO
In this study, the authors examined the influence of prior knowledge activation on information processing by means of a prior knowledge activation procedure adopted from the read-generate paradigm. On the basis of cue-target pairs, participants in the experimental groups generated two different sets of items before studying a relevant list. Subsequently, participants were informed that they had to study the items in the list and that they should try to remember as many items as possible. The authors assessed the processing time allocated to the items in the list and free recall of those items. The results revealed that the experimental groups spent less time on items that had already been activated. In addition, the experimental groups outperformed the control group in overall free recall and in free recall of the activated items. Between-group comparisons did not demonstrate significant effects with respect to the processing time and free recall of nonactivated items. The authors interpreted these results in terms of the discrepancy reduction model of regulating the amount of processing time allocated to different parts of the list.