Information without knowledge: the effects of Internet search on learning

The Influences of SES on Patient Choice of Doctor: A Systematic Review

INTRODUCTION

As patients become increasingly involved in healthcare decision-making, it is important to examine the drivers behind patient choice of doctor (PCOD); the initial decision can have lasting impacts on patients' trust in providers and health outcomes. However, limited studies have explored PCOD relative to socioeconomic status (SES) or health disparity. This review identified similar preferences and varied decision criteria in PCOD across SES groups.

METHODS

PubMed, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and relevant cross-references were searched for articles published between January 2007-September 2022. Papers were screened using Covidence. Included studies examined PCOD by income and/or educational levels. Analysis was performed in 2022-2023.

RESULTS

From 4,449 search results, 29 articles were selected (16 countries, 14 medical specialties, total of 32,651 participants). Individuals of higher SES ranked physician characteristics (e.g., qualifications, empathy) or performance more important than cost or convenience. Individuals of lower SES often had to prioritize logistical factors (e.g., insurance coverage, distance) due to resource constraints and gaps in knowledge or awareness about options. Despite differing healthcare systems, such divergence in PCOD were relatively consistent across countries. Some patients, especially females and disadvantaged groups, favored gender-concordant physicians for intimate medical matters (e.g., gynecologist); this partiality was not limited to conservative cultures. Few researchers investigated the outcomes of PCOD and indicated that lower-SES populations inadvertently chose, experienced, or perceived lower quality of care.

DISCUSSION

Patients' decision criteria varied by SES, even under national systems intended for universal access, indicating the impacts of social determinants and structural inequities. Health education supporting patient decision-making and research on how SES affects PCOD and outcomes could help reduce health disparity.

Artificial intelligence and illusions of understanding in scientific research

Scientists are enthusiastically imagining ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) tools might improve research. Why are AI tools so attractive and what are the risks of implementing them across the research pipeline? Here we develop a taxonomy of scientists' visions for AI, observing that their appeal comes from promises to improve productivity and objectivity by overcoming human shortcomings. But proposed AI solutions can also exploit our cognitive limitations, making us vulnerable to illusions of understanding in which we believe we understand more about the world than we actually do. Such illusions obscure the scientific community's ability to see the formation of scientific monocultures, in which some types of methods, questions and viewpoints come to dominate alternative approaches, making science less innovative and more vulnerable to errors. The proliferation of AI tools in science risks introducing a phase of scientific enquiry in which we produce more but understand less. By analysing the appeal of these tools, we provide a framework for advancing discussions of responsible knowledge production in the age of AI.

The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Interest in Prayer and Spirituality in Poland According to Google Trends Data in the CONTEXT of the Mediatisation of Religion Processes

The research undertaken in this article uses the Google Trends tool to study the degree of interest in prayer and general spirituality during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland and Europe. The authors assumed that for people interested in prayer during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Internet served as a virtual prayer book. The main research questions addressed the frequency of typed queries, referring not only to the word “prayer” but also to specific types of prayer. In addition, interest in prayer was compared with interest in the word “prophecy” to explore the relationship between religiosity and interest in the supernatural sphere in its broadest sense. The analysis shows that there is distinct recurrence regarding the terms searched, with some of them noticeably intensifying with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings also show that keywords related to prophecies were searched more frequently at significant moments in Polish history (2005—the death of John Paul II, 2010—the plane crash in which the President of Poland died) than in the months of 2020 when the pandemic struck and escalated. At that time, searches related to religion were more frequent. It can also be concluded that the outbreak of the pandemic contributed to an increase in the religious activity of Poles. The article is interdisciplinary in nature, referring primarily to Religion Studies and Mass Media and Communication Studies.

Supporting Cognition With Modern Technology: Distributed Cognition Today and in an AI-Enhanced Future

In the present article, we explore prospects for using artificial intelligence (AI) to distribute cognition via cognitive offloading (i.e., to delegate thinking tasks to AI-technologies). Modern technologies for cognitive support are rapidly developing and increasingly popular. Today, many individuals heavily rely on their smartphones or other technical gadgets to support their daily life but also their learning and work. For instance, smartphones are used to track and analyze changes in the environment, and to store and continually update relevant information. Thus, individuals can offload (i.e., externalize) information to their smartphones and refresh their knowledge by accessing it. This implies that using modern technologies such as AI empowers users via offloading and enables them to function as always-updated knowledge professionals, so that they can deploy their insights strategically instead of relying on outdated and memorized facts. This AI-supported offloading of cognitive processes also saves individuals' internal cognitive resources by distributing the task demands into their environment. In this article, we provide (1) an overview of empirical findings on cognitive offloading and (2) an outlook on how individuals' offloading behavior might change in an AI-enhanced future. More specifically, we first discuss determinants of offloading such as the design of technical tools and links to metacognition. Furthermore, we discuss benefits and risks of cognitive offloading. While offloading improves immediate task performance, it might also be a threat for users' cognitive abilities. Following this, we provide a perspective on whether individuals will make heavier use of AI-technologies for offloading in the future and how this might affect their cognition. On one hand, individuals might heavily rely on easily accessible AI-technologies which in return might diminish their internal cognition/learning. On the other hand, individuals might aim at enhancing their cognition so that they can keep up with AI-technologies and will not be replaced by them. Finally, we present own data and findings from the literature on the assumption that individuals' personality is a predictor of trust in AI. Trust in modern AI-technologies might be a strong determinant for wider appropriation and dependence on these technologies to distribute cognition and should thus be considered in an AI-enhanced future.