Differentiating Experience From Cue Utilization in Radiological Assessments

Abstract

Objective This research was designed to examine the contribution of self-reported experience and cue utilization to diagnostic accuracy in the context of radiology. Background Within radiology, it is unclear how task-related experience contributes to the acquisition of associations between features with events in memory, or cues, and how they contribute to diagnostic performance. Method Data were collected from 18 trainees and 41 radiologists. The participants completed a radiology edition of the established cue utilization assessment tool EXPERTise 2.0, which provides a measure of cue utilization based on performance on a number of domain-specific tasks. The participants also completed a separate image interpretation task as an independent measure of diagnostic performance. Results Consistent with previous research, a k-means cluster analysis using the data from EXPERTise 2.0 delineated two groups, the pattern of centroids of which reflected higher and lower cue utilization. Controlling for years of experience, participants with higher cue utilization were more accurate on the image interpretation task compared to participants who demonstrated relatively lower cue utilization ( p = .01). Conclusion This study provides support for the role of cue utilization in assessments of radiology images among qualified radiologists. Importantly, it also demonstrates that cue utilization and self-reported years of experience as a radiologist make independent contributions to performance on the radiological diagnostic task. Application Task-related experience, including training, needs to be structured to ensure that learners have the opportunity to acquire feature–event relationships and internalize these associations in the form of cues in memory.

Static versus dynamic medical images: The role of cue utilization in diagnostic performance

“…There were no correlations evident between self‐reported experience and any of the performance measures. This is consistent with previous work in the medical imaging domain (e.g., Carrigan et al, 2020b; Crane et al, 2018; Sunday et al, 2018; Williams et al, 2021; Williams & Drew, 2019), where self‐reported experience was unrelated to expert performance. One of the limitations associated with our study was that the performance measure included a narrow range of cardiac pathology which may mean that some echocardiographers may have more expertise with different pathologies.…”

Individual differences in echocardiography: Visual object recognition ability predicts cue utilization

“…The next phase will examine whether there is a relationship between cue utilization and performance on a domain specific task. Research in the radiological medical domain has shown that cue utilization differentiates performance on a static, medical image categorization task (Carrigan et al, 2020). For the echocardiographers, who view dynamic stimuli in practice, the stimuli will include the presentation of brief movies in an independent task, to emulate their real‐world diagnostic experience.…”

“…Behavior associated with higher cue utilization has been associated with greater performance across a range of tasks, including radiology (Carrigan et al, 2020), paediatric intensive care (Loveday et al, 2013b), audiology (Watkinson, Bristow, Auton, McMahon, & Wiggins, 2018), and anesthesiology (Crane et al, 2018). However, it is also clear that cue utilization in one context can impact performance in another, related context.…”

Interruptions versus breaks: The role of cue utilisation in a simulated process control task

“…For example, a physician might associate emphysema (feature) with poor oxygen saturation (event) and order supplementary oxygen as a precaution. The greater the application of these cue‐based associations or productions, the greater the residual resources that are made available in working memory (Brouwers, Wiggins, Helton, et al, 2016; Brouwers, Wiggins, Griffin, et al, 2017; Carrigan et al, 2020).…”

“…The greater the application of these cue-based associations or productions, the greater the residual resources that are made available in working memory (Brouwers, Wiggins, Helton, et al, 2016;Brouwers, Wiggins, Griffin, et al, 2017;Carrigan et al, 2020).…”