Section 5 #8, 9, 10

8. In a study with five endocrinologists, five residents, and five medical students, a number of variables were measured centering around a clinical interview conducted with a patient. In the interview, accuracy differed: 4/5 experts were correct, 1/5 residents were correct, and 0/5 medical students were correct in there diagnoses. This is due to the greater knowledge base of experts and more information stored in LTM with which to confirm or disconfirm the patient’s symptoms as being part of the diagnosed disease. The length of the interview also differed; it was longest for the med students, shorter for the residents, and shortest for the experts. The experts are definitely using optimal stopping – they are taking in just enough information to make the correct decision and not wasting time to take in irrelevant or erroneous information. The number of findings (or the inferences made by the doctors) was highest for the residents, next highest for the medical students, and lowest for the experts. This is because…??? The observations, or number of accounts of verbatim info that was provided by the patient, fared the same way. The ratio of observations to findings was only 2:1 for the expert though, while it was nearly 3:1 for the novice. This could be due to the greater organization of knowledge on part of the expert as well as the ability to recognize patterns better and apply them to the current situation.

9. One way that experts differ from novices is in how they represent problems. Experts tend to represent them in terms of derived features. They will take a lot of time to set up the problem, while novices will just try to begin solving right away. This can be seen in weather forecasters; expert forecasters will see different types of fronts in cloud patters, while novices will simply start working with those given cloud patterns. Another way they differ is the extent to which they rely on LTM: experts rely more on it, and novices rely less. In ATC, the experts are better able to space and sequence; they’ve seen patterns of airplanes before and are able to recognize the pattern of planes as one they’ve seen before. Novices aren’t able to do this as well, and their working memory is compromised. Finally, experts rely on less information to make more accurate decisions. This is because they can field out information that is either erroneous or redundant. Novices tend to take in all of the data; they don’t know what is relevant. In commanding officers, instructors, and students involved with submarines, evidence shows that the commanding officers knew more than the instructors who knew more than the students.

10.