Diagnosing Crime and Diagnosing Disease‐II: Visual Pattern Perception and Diagnostic Accuracy

Abstract

Previously, we reviewed how general cognitive processes might be susceptible to bias across both forensic and clinical fields, and how interdisciplinary comparisons could reduce error. We discuss several examples of clinical tasks which are heavily dependent on visual processing, comparing them to eyewitness identification (EI). We review the "constructive" nature of visual processing, and how contextual factors influence both medical experts and witnesses in decision making and recall. Overall, studies suggest common cognitive factors uniting these visual tasks, in both their strengths and shortcomings. Recently forensic sciences have advocated reducing errors by identifying and controlling nonrelevant information. Such efforts could effectively assist medical diagnosis. We suggest potential remedies for cognitive bias in these tasks. These can generalize across the clinical and forensic domains, including controlling the sequencing of contextual factors. One solution is an agnostic primary reading before incorporation of a complete history and interpretation.

Heuristics in medicine:

“…Being aware of one's biases has shown to improve them in the short-term, but there have been few studies looking at the long-term retention of these bias reductions, and knowledge of biases alone is not enough to counter cognitive-biases effectively (Satya-Murti & Lockhart, 2018).…”

“…Physicians' decision-making processes are often guided by heuristics due to the biological evidence available being insufficient to guide every decision doctors make every day (McDonald, 1996). Anchoring can be frequently seen in medical decision-making when doctors focus on one particular symptom that they view to be the most pertinent, leading them to overlook other, as or more important symptoms (Satya-Murti & Lockhart, 2018). Another heuristic described by Kahneman & Tversky (1974), the representativeness heuristic, is where people estimate the prevalence of something occurring by comparing it with a mental prototype, (McDonald, 1996;Kahneman & Tversky 1974;Bowes et al, 2020).…”