Adding emotionality to seductive details-Consequences for learning?

How Malpractice and Error Cases Influence Information Recall in General Practice Residents, a Vignette Study

Purpose

Integrating diagnostic error and malpractice cases into clinical reasoning education may enhance diagnostic reasoning by highlighting atypical presentations and diagnostic risks in complex contexts. While emotionally engaging, these cases might also affect information retention. This study examines how malpractice, error, and neutral case presentations influence recall for different information types and their interaction with learners' interest, satisfaction and anxiety levels.

Methods

In this two-phase between-subjects experiment, 89 first-year general practice (GP) residents reviewed four clinical vignettes in either malpractice, diagnostic error, or neutral formats. Vignettes were structurally identical, with claim-related details in malpractice versions replaced by general medical information in others. Anxiety was measured pre- and post-exercise. After a one-hour filler task, participants completed a free recall task, and their interest and satisfaction levels were assessed. Recalled idea units (clinical case-specific, medical-theoretical, claim-specific) were analyzed using ANOVAs.

Results

Anxiety, interest, and satisfaction levels remained similar across conditions. The proportion of total recalled idea units did not differ significantly (malpractice 11.38%, neutral 12.91%, error 13.12% p = 0.57). However, malpractice participants recalled fewer clinical case-specific units (malpractice 12.19%, neutral 19.43%, error 15.87% p = 0.007) while recalling more claim-specific units compared to medical-theoretical units in the other conditions (malpractice 7.23%, neutral 0.42%, error 1.3% p < 0.001).

Conclusion

GP residents retained fewer clinical case-specific details from malpractice claim vignettes than from neutral vignettes, with the missing information substituted by claim-specific details, without an increase in anxiety or interest. Further research is needed to understand the long-term impact of these differences on future diagnostic accuracy in clinical practice.

Learning with self-generated drawings and the impact of learners' emotional states

Introduction

The present study examined the influence of emotional states when learning with self-generated drawings. It was assumed that learners in a positive emotional state would profit from learning with self-generated drawings, while learners in a negative emotional state would not profit from this strategy to the same extent but would rather benefit through reading.

Methods

University students (N  =  123) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions resulting from a 2  ×  2 design with self-generated drawings (yes vs. no) and emotional state (positive vs. negative) as independent variables.

Results

Results showed that learning with self-generated drawings was more beneficial for a following transfer test than learning without drawings - irrespective of a learner's emotional state. The quality of self-generated drawings predicted the learning outcomes of the retention and pictorial test, but not for transfer.

Discussion

Missing effects of emotional states and the missing interaction with self-generated drawings will be discussed.

Do a pedagogical agent's clothing and an animated video's setting affect learning?

Pedagogical agents are often used to enhance social cues in learning materials. The inclusion of pedagogical agents raises several design questions, for example on what kind of clothing the agent should wear. Further, it is not yet clear how the setting of an animated learning video (i.e., the digitally created background) affects learning. In an online experiment (N = 200), we investigated whether creating thematically appropriate clothing and setting has some added value in that it improves learning outcomes in comparison to more neutral assets. Whereas all participants acquired knowledge from the animated video, there were no main effects of clothing and setting for any of the dependent variables, but an interaction for learning outcomes (η p 2 = 0.02 ), indicating that the appropriately dressed agent worked better combined with the inappropriate setting than with the appropriate setting. Overall, given those non-significant main effects and the small effect size of the interaction, there seem to be some degrees of freedom for designers of pedagogical agents in animated learning videos. However, these degrees of freedom may be limited to at least moderate (i.e., neutral) levels of appropriateness.

A Review of Seductive Details in Educational Activities Using Electronic Slide Presentations: Derailing the Learning Process

This review article examines the use of seductive details in nursing education activities. Seductive details are irrelevant images that are placed into educational material. Although seductive details may be found in any type of educational material and at any academic level, this article focuses on the placement of seductive details in electronic slide presentations used in nursing education activities. Educators optimistically place seductive details in educational material to engage learners or provide a momentary break from the presentation. Although engaging the learner is important, educators must use methods that do not derail how the learner's brain remembers information. Added visuals should be relevant to the material needed to be understood. Using seductive details may adversely affect learning by overloading the working memory with extraneous cognitive information, affecting the ability of the learner to create a coherent mental model needed to store a long-term memory. Evidence-based information about seductive detail use is nonexistent in nursing education literature. Professional nurse educators must carefully consider the use of seductive details in electronic slide presentations. [J Contin Educ Nurs. 2023;54(6):261-267.].

Inconsistent seduction: Addressing confounds and methodological issues in the study of the seductive detail effect

INTRODUCTION

The inclusion of interesting but irrelevant details in instructional materials may interfere with recall and application of the core content. Although this seductive detail effect is well researched, recent research highlights factors that may influence the effect size.

OBJECTIVES

The current study discusses confounds and methodological issues in the study of seductive details and outlines strategies for overcoming them. These practices were then applied in a study that examined the role of learning objectives on the seductive detail effect.

METHODS

Seductive details were selected on the basis of interest and importance level and matched for word count and reading level. The 3 × 2 between-subjects design presented 132 undergraduate students with a lesson on plate tectonics; participants completed tests on both recall and transfer.

RESULTS

Results did not reveal a consistent detrimental effect of high-interest details on core content recall and transfer. On the recall test, contrary to expectation, the seductive detail effect obtained only when objectives were provided. A similar pattern emerged on the transfer task.

CONCLUSION

These findings highlight the difficulty of consistently eliciting the seductive detail effect. We discuss outstanding issues that must be addressed in order to develop practical guidelines on the inclusion of seductive details in educational materials.