TY - JOUR
T1 - Hip fracture or not? The reversed prevalence effect among non-experts’ diagnosis
AU - Zhang, Hanshu
AU - Hung, Shen Wu
AU - Chen, Yu Pin
AU - Ku, Jan Wen
AU - Tseng, Philip
AU - Lu, Yueh Hsun
AU - Yang, Cheng Ta
N1 - Funding Information:
This research is supported by MOST109-2410-H-006-049-MY3 to C.-T. Yang and by 109-2423-H-038-001-MY4 to P. Tseng from the Ministry of Science of Technology, Taiwan. H. Zhang received support from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (CCNU21XJ040, CCNU22QN020).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2023/12
Y1 - 2023/12
N2 - Despite numerous investigations of the prevalence effect on medical image perception, little research has been done to examine the effect of expertise, and its possible interaction with prevalence. In this study, medical practitioners were instructed to detect the presence of hip fracture in 50 X-ray images with either high prevalence (Nsignal = 40) or low prevalence (Nsignal = 10). Results showed that compared to novices (e.g., pediatricians, dentists, neurologists), the manipulation of prevalence shifted participant’s criteria in a different direction for experts who perform hip fracture diagnosis on a daily basis. That is, when prevalence rate is low (pfracture-present = 0.2), experts held more conservative criteria in answering “fracture-present,” whereas novices were more likely to believe there was fracture. Importantly, participants’ detection discriminability did not vary by the prevalence condition. In addition, all participants were more conservative with “fracture-present” responses when task difficulty increased. We suspect the apparent opposite criteria shift between experts and novices may have come from medical training that made novices to believe that a miss would result in larger cost compared to false positive, or because they failed to update their prior belief about the signal prevalence in the task, both would suggest that novices and experts may have different beliefs in placing the optimal strategy in the hip fracture diagnosis. Our work can contribute to medical education training as well as other applied clinical diagnosis that aims to mitigate the prevalence effect.
AB - Despite numerous investigations of the prevalence effect on medical image perception, little research has been done to examine the effect of expertise, and its possible interaction with prevalence. In this study, medical practitioners were instructed to detect the presence of hip fracture in 50 X-ray images with either high prevalence (Nsignal = 40) or low prevalence (Nsignal = 10). Results showed that compared to novices (e.g., pediatricians, dentists, neurologists), the manipulation of prevalence shifted participant’s criteria in a different direction for experts who perform hip fracture diagnosis on a daily basis. That is, when prevalence rate is low (pfracture-present = 0.2), experts held more conservative criteria in answering “fracture-present,” whereas novices were more likely to believe there was fracture. Importantly, participants’ detection discriminability did not vary by the prevalence condition. In addition, all participants were more conservative with “fracture-present” responses when task difficulty increased. We suspect the apparent opposite criteria shift between experts and novices may have come from medical training that made novices to believe that a miss would result in larger cost compared to false positive, or because they failed to update their prior belief about the signal prevalence in the task, both would suggest that novices and experts may have different beliefs in placing the optimal strategy in the hip fracture diagnosis. Our work can contribute to medical education training as well as other applied clinical diagnosis that aims to mitigate the prevalence effect.
KW - Hip fracture diagnosis
KW - Medical image perception
KW - Prevalence effect
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U2 - 10.1186/s41235-022-00455-w
DO - 10.1186/s41235-022-00455-w
M3 - Article
C2 - 36600082
AN - SCOPUS:85145533550
SN - 2365-7464
VL - 8
JO - Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications
JF - Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications
IS - 1
M1 - 1
ER -