An adequately developed spatial representation of number magnitude is associated with children's general arithmetic achievement. Therefore, a new spatial-numerical training program for kindergarten children was developed in which presentation and response were associated with a congruent spatial numerical representation. In particular, children responded by a full-body spatial movement on a digital dance mat in a magnitude comparison task. This spatial-numerical training was more effective than a non-spatial control training in enhancing children's performance on a number line estimation task and a subtest of a standardized mathematical achievement battery (TEDI-MATH). A mediation analysis suggested that these improvements were driven by an improvement of children's mental number line representation and not only by unspecific factors such as attention or motivation. These results suggest a benefit of spatial numerical associations. Rather than being a merely associated covariate, they work as an independently manipulated variable which is functional for numerical development.

BackgroundHealth knowledge develops fast and includes a lot of ambiguous or tentative information. In their daily routine, both health care students and professionals continuously have to make judgments about the viability of health knowledge. People’s epistemological beliefs (EBs) and their therapeutic health concepts are factors that influence how they deal with health knowledge. However, very little is known about the occurrence of these factors at different stages of people’s career. The present study examines the EBs and therapeutic health concepts of physiotherapy students in their vocational training and the EBs and therapeutic health concepts of professionals.MethodsIn a cross-sectional study physiotherapy students and professional physiotherapists filled in a questionnaire that measured their personal EBs about physiotherapy and medicine, as well as their biomedical and biopsychosocial therapeutic health concepts. We compared the participants’ EBs regarding both knowledge domains, and their therapeutic health concepts using paired samples t-tests. We also examined the differences between first-year students, advanced students, and professionals regarding their EBs and their therapeutic health concepts using ANOVAs.ResultsEighty-three students and 84 professionals participated in this study, 114/167 (68%) participants were female. EBs as well as therapeutic health concepts differed depending upon the participants’ training status. Professionals had more sophisticated EBs than students regarding both knowledge in physiotherapy (F(2, 164) = 6.74, P = 0.002, η2p = 0.08) and knowledge in medicine (F(2, 164) = 5.93, P = 0.003, η2p = 0.07). In addition, high values in a biopsychosocial therapeutic health concept already occurred in an early phase of training (F(2, 164) = 5.39, P = 0.005, η2p = 0.06), whereas increased values in a biomedical concept did not occur until people’s professional life (F(2, 164) = 10.99, P < 0.001, η2p = 0.12).ConclusionsThe specificities of personal EBs and therapeutic health concepts in different stages of health care training have so far been insufficiently considered in medical education research. The current study has aimed to shed light on the occurrence of these concepts in students as compared to professionals. We point out implications of our findings for educational practice and make suggestions for future research.

BackgroundMedical expert forums on the Internet play an increasing role in patient counseling. Therefore, it is important to understand how doctor-patient communication is influenced in such forums both by features of the patients or advice seekers, as expressed in their forum queries, and by characteristics of the medical experts involved.ObjectiveIn this experimental study, we aimed to examine in what way (1) the particular wording of patient queries and (2) medical experts’ therapeutic health concepts (for example, beliefs around adhering to a distinctly scientific understanding of diagnosis and treatment and a clear focus on evidence-based medicine) impact communication behavior of the medical experts in an Internet forum.MethodsAdvanced medical students (in their ninth semester of medical training) were recruited as participants. Participation in the online forum was part of a communication training embedded in a gynecology course. We first measured their biomedical therapeutic health concept (hereinafter called “biomedical concept”). Then they participated in an online forum where they answered fictitious patient queries about mammography screening that either included scientific or emotional wording in a between-group design. We analyzed participants’ replies with regard to the following dimensions: their use of scientific or emotional wording, the amount of communicated information, and their attempt to build a positive doctor-patient relationship.ResultsThis study was carried out with 117 medical students (73 women, 41 men, 3 did not indicate their sex). We found evidence that both the wording of patient queries and the participants’ biomedical concept influenced participants’ response behavior. They answered emotional patient queries in a more emotional way (mean 0.92, SD 1.02) than scientific patient queries (mean 0.26, SD 0.55; t 74=3.48, P<.001, d=0.81). We also found a significant interaction effect between participants’ use of scientific or emotional wording and type of patient query (F 2,74=10.29, P<.01, partial η2=0.12) indicating that participants used scientific wording independently of the type of patient query, whereas they used emotional wording particularly when replying to emotional patient queries. In addition, the more pronounced the medical experts’ biomedical concept was, the more scientifically (adjusted β=.20; F 1,75=2.95, P=.045) and the less emotionally (adjusted β=–.22; F 1,74=3.66, P=.03) they replied to patient queries. Finally, we found that participants’ biomedical concept predicted their engagement in relationship building (adjusted β=–.26): The more pronounced their biomedical concept was, the less they attempted to build a positive doctor-patient relationship (F 1,74=5.39, P=.02).ConclusionsCommunication training for medical experts could aim to address this issue of recognizing patients’ communication styles and needs in certain situations in order to teach medical experts how to take those aspects adequately into account. In addition, communication training should also ma...

ObjectiveThis study aimed at examining the impact of different types of physicians' communication styles on people's subsequent evaluation of physician attributes as well as on their information processing, attitude and decision making.MethodIn a between‐group experiment, 80 participants watched one of three videos in which a gynaecologist displayed a particular communication style in a consultation situation on contraception with an intrauterine device. We compared doctor‐centred communication (DCC) vs patient‐centred communication (PCC) vs patient‐centred communication with need‐orientation (PCC‐N).ResultsIn the PCC condition, participants perceived the physician to be more empathetic and more competent than in the DCC condition. In the DCC condition, participants showed less attitude change compared to the other conditions. In the PCC‐N condition, the physician was perceived as more empathetic and more socially competent than in the other conditions. However, participants acquired less knowledge in the PCC‐N condition.ConclusionWe conclude that appropriate application of particular communication styles depends on specific consultation goals. Our results suggest that patients' needs should be addressed if the main goal is to build a good relationship, whereas a traditional PCC style appears to be more effective in communicating factual information.

It is a problem when prospective health care professionals turn a blind eye to discrepancies that do not fit their view of the world. It may be useful for educational purposes to include a knowledge conflict caused by a combination of conviction and inconsistent information to facilitate learning processes.