Eyes-on training and radiological expertise: an examination of expertise development and its effects on visual working memory

Feature-based attentional control for distractor suppression

To investigate whether attentional suppression is merely a byproduct of target facilitation or a result of independent mechanisms for distractor suppression, the present study examined whether attentional suppression takes place when target facilitation hardly occurs using a spatial cueing paradigm. Participants searched for target letters that were not red, i.e., a negative color. On each trial, a target color was randomly chosen among 12 colors to prevent establishing attentional control for target colors and to reduce intertrial priming for target colors. Immediately before a target display, a noninformative spatial cue was presented at one of the possible target locations. The cue was rendered in a negative color, which was to be ignored, to detect targets or the reference color, which was never presented for target and non-target letters. Experiment 1 showed that negative color cues captured attention less than reference color cues, suggesting feature-based attentional suppression. The suppression effect was replicated when the temporal interval between the onsets of the cue and target displays was reduced in Experiments 2 and 3, suggesting proactive suppression. Experiment 3 directly confirmed no attentional control settings for target colors and intertrial priming. These findings suggest that distractor features can guide attention at the pre-attentive stage when target features are not used to attend to targets.

An algorithmic approach to determine expertise development using object-related gaze pattern sequences

Eye tracking (ET) technology is increasingly utilized to quantify visual behavior in the study of the development of domain-specific expertise. However, the identification and measurement of distinct gaze patterns using traditional ET metrics has been challenging, and the insights gained shown to be inconclusive about the nature of expert gaze behavior. In this article, we introduce an algorithmic approach for the extraction of object-related gaze sequences and determine task-related expertise by investigating the development of gaze sequence patterns during a multi-trial study of a simplified airplane assembly task. We demonstrate the algorithm in a study where novice (n = 28) and expert (n = 2) eye movements were recorded in successive trials (n = 8), allowing us to verify whether similar patterns develop with increasing expertise. In the proposed approach, AOI sequences were transformed to string representation and processed using the k-mer method, a well-known method from the field of computational biology. Our results for expertise development suggest that basic tendencies are visible in traditional ET metrics, such as the fixation duration, but are much more evident for k-mers of k > 2. With increased on-task experience, the appearance of expert k-mer patterns in novice gaze sequences was shown to increase significantly (p < 0.001). The results illustrate that the multi-trial k-mer approach is suitable for revealing specific cognitive processes and can quantify learning progress using gaze patterns that include both spatial and temporal information, which could provide a valuable tool for novice training and expert assessment.

Change deafness can be reduced, but not eliminated, using brief training interventions

Research on change deafness indicates there are substantial limitations to listeners' perception of which objects are present in complex auditory scenes, an ability that is important for many everyday situations. Experiment 1 examined the extent to which change deafness could be reduced by training with performance feedback compared to no training. Experiment 2 compared the efficacy of training with detailed feedback that identified the change and provided performance feedback on each trial, training without feedback, and no training. We further examined the timescale over which improvement unfolded by examining performance using an immediate post-test and a second post-test 12 h later. We were able to reduce, but not eliminate, change deafness for all groups, and determined that the practice content strongly impacted bias and response strategy. Training with simple performance feedback reduced change deafness but increased bias and false alarm rates, while providing a more detailed feedback improved change detection without affecting bias. Together, these findings suggest that change deafness can be reduced if a relatively small amount of practice is completed. When bias did not impede performance during the first post-test, the majority of the learning following training occurred immediately, suggesting that fast within-session learning primarily supported improvement on the task.

What do we know about volumetric medical image interpretation?: a review of the basic science and medical image perception literatures

Interpretation of volumetric medical images represents a rapidly growing proportion of the workload in radiology. However, relatively little is known about the strategies that best guide search behavior when looking for abnormalities in volumetric images. Although there is extensive literature on two-dimensional medical image perception, it is an open question whether the conclusions drawn from these images can be generalized to volumetric images. Importantly, volumetric images have distinct characteristics (e.g., scrolling through depth, smooth-pursuit eye-movements, motion onset cues, etc.) that should be considered in future research. In this manuscript, we will review the literature on medical image perception and discuss relevant findings from basic science that can be used to generate predictions about expertise in volumetric image interpretation. By better understanding search through volumetric images, we may be able to identify common sources of error, characterize the optimal strategies for searching through depth, or develop new training and assessment techniques for radiology residents.

Change deafness, dual-task performance, and domain-specific expertise

In a change deafness manipulation using radio broadcasts of sporting events, we show that change deafness to a switch in talker increases when listeners are asked to monitor both lexical and indexical information for change. We held semantic content constant and demonstrated a change deafness rate of 85% when participants listened to the home team broadcast of a hockey game that switched midway to the away team broadcast with a different announcer. In Study 2, participants were asked to monitor either the indexical characteristics ( listen for a change in announcer) or both the indexical and semantic components ( listen for a change in announcer or a goal scored). Monitoring both components led to significantly greater change deafness even though both groups were alerted to the possibility of a change in announcer. In Study 3, we changed both the indexical and the semantic components when the broadcast switched from a hockey game to a basketball game. We found a negative correlation between sports expertise and change deafness. The results are discussed in terms of the nature of perceptual representation and the influence of expertise and evolution on attention allocation.

Individual differences in perceptual abilities in medical imaging: the Vanderbilt Chest Radiograph Test

Radiologists make many important decisions when detecting nodules on chest radiographs. While training can result in high levels of performance of this task, there could be individual differences in relevant perceptual abilities that are present pre-training. A pre-requisite to address this question is a valid and reliable measure of such abilities. The present work introduces a new measure, the Vanderbilt Chest Radiograph Test (VCRT), which aims to quantify individual differences in perceptual abilities for radiograph-related decision-making in novices. We validate the relevance of the test to diagnostic imaging by verifying radiologists’ superior performance on the test compared to novices’. The final VCRT version produces scores with acceptable internal consistency. Then, we investigate how the VCRT can be used in future research by evaluating how the test relates to extant measures of face and object recognition ability. We find that the VCRT shares a small but significant portion of its variance with a measure of novel object recognition, suggesting that some aspect of VCRT performance is driven by a domain-general visual ability.

Change detection: training and transfer

Observers often fail to notice even dramatic changes to their environment, a phenomenon known as change blindness. If training could enhance change detection performance in general, then it might help to remedy some real-world consequences of change blindness (e.g. failing to detect hazards while driving). We examined whether adaptive training on a simple change detection task could improve the ability to detect changes in untrained tasks for young and older adults. Consistent with an effective training procedure, both young and older adults were better able to detect changes to trained objects following training. However, neither group showed differential improvement on untrained change detection tasks when compared to active control groups. Change detection training led to improvements on the trained task but did not generalize to other change detection tasks.