Cognitive processing differences of experts and novices when correlating anatomy and cross-sectional imaging

Enhancing Imaging Anatomy Competency: Integrating Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) Viewers Into the Anatomy Lab Experience

INTRODUCTION

Radiologic interpretation is a skill necessary for all physicians to provide quality care for their patients. However, some medical students are not exposed to Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) imaging manipulation until their third year during clinical rotations. The objective of this study is to evaluate how medical students exposed to DICOM manipulation perform on identifying anatomical structures compared to students who were not exposed.

METHODS

This was a cross-sectional cohort study with 19 medical student participants organized into a test and control group. The test group consisted of first-year students who had been exposed to a new imaging anatomy curriculum (n = 9). The control group consisted of second-year students who had not had this experience (n = 10). The outcomes measured included quiz performance, self-reported confidence levels, and eye-tracking data.

RESULTS

Students in the test group performed better on the quiz compared to students in the control group (p = 0.03). Confidence between the test and control groups was not significantly different (p = 0.16), though a moderate to large effect size difference was noted (Hedges' g = 0.75). Saccade peak velocity and fixation duration between the groups were not significantly different (p = 0.29, p = 0.77), though a moderate effect size improvement was noted in saccade peak velocity for the test group (Hedges' g = 0.49).

CONCLUSION

The results from this study suggest that the early introduction of DICOM imaging into a medical school curriculum does impact students' performance when asked to identify anatomical structures on a standardized quiz.

Clinical reasoning in emergency medical technicians and its compliance with the illness script theory: A pilot study

BACKGROUND

Emergency medical technicians (EMTs) play a pivotal role in the management and treatment chain of emergency patients and their health outcomes. Knowing the clinical reasoning pattern in prehospital procedures is of particular importance that can help to develop a correct clinical decision-making process in this group. Therefore, this study aimed to clarify the clinical reasoning in EMTs and evaluate its compliance with the "illness script" theory.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This descriptive-analytical study was conducted in 2021 at Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences (HUMS) by involving EMTs in two groups of experts and novices. To collect and analyze participants' mental script-based information, the "think aloud" method was used. In the content analysis of extracted protocols, two main steps were considered: 1) preparing a suitable map to compare the protocol with the base pattern and 2) quantifying the relationship between the protocol and the base pattern. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS)-21 software, the Shapiro-Wilk test, and the independent t-test were used for analyzing quantitative data.

RESULTS

After exploring the concordance of the clinical reasoning of EMTs with the base pattern, results showed that the components of Enabling condition and Management were consistent with the illness script strategy. Pathophysiology and Diagnosis components did not conform to the base pattern. Regarding Signs and Symptoms, these were significantly different from the classic pattern of illness script. A new component called Contextual insight was suggested for this pattern. Generally, on comparing the clinical script content of experts and novices, only two components of Pathophysiology and Diagnosis did not show any significant difference (P > 0.05) between these two groups.

CONCLUSION

Results of evaluating the clinical reasoning of the under-study groups showed that in some components of the pattern, they practiced as in other medical groups, but in relation to some components, this was not the case. It is due to the different nature of the prehospital conditions. Also, there is a need to add new components to the base model, which should be considered in distinguishing between expert and novice EMTs.

Investigating the network structure of domain-specific knowledge using the semantic fluency task

Cognitive scientists have a long-standing interest in quantifying the structure of semantic memory. Here, we investigate whether a commonly used paradigm to study the structure of semantic memory, the semantic fluency task, as well as computational methods from network science could be leveraged to explore the underlying knowledge structures of academic disciplines such as psychology or biology. To compare the knowledge representations of individuals with relatively different levels of expertise in academic subjects, undergraduate students (i.e., experts) and preuniversity high school students (i.e., novices) completed a semantic fluency task with cue words corresponding to general semantic categories (i.e., animals, fruits) and specific academic domains (e.g., psychology, biology). Network analyses of their fluency networks found that both domain-general and domain-specific semantic networks of undergraduates were more efficiently connected and less modular than the semantic networks of high school students. Our results provide an initial proof-of-concept that the semantic fluency task could be used by educators and cognitive scientists to study the representation of more specific domains of knowledge, potentially providing new ways of quantifying the nature of expert cognitive representations.