Fostering Perceptual Skills in Medical Diagnosis

Abstract

This paper presents a novel instructional approach for conveying perceptual aspects of clinical knowledge (perceptual skills) in diagnosing medical images. Although, the importance of perceptual skills for diagnosis from medical images has been shown in many expertise difference studies, medical education has hardly focused on conveying those skills, yet. We propose an approach based on theories for conveying cognitive skills: cognitive modeling and (cognitive) process-oriented worked examples. In both cases, an expert model externalizes her/his cognitive processes by verbalizations. We argue that diagnosing based on medical images is not only a cognitive, but also a perceptual task. Consequently, the expert model should additionally externalize her/his perceptual processes as eye movements (eye movement modeling examples). This approach is supported by a study in the example of medical diagnosis based on patient video cases.