Peter McGeorge

The sorting techniques: a tutorial paper on card sorts, picture sorts and item sorts

Although sorting techniques (e.g. card sorts) are widely used in knowledge acquisition and requirements acquisition, they have received little formal attention compared to related techniques such as repertory grids and laddering. This paper briefly describes the main sorting techniques, and then provides a detailed tutorial on one variety (repeated single-criterion sorts), using a worked example. Guidelines for choice and sequencing of techniques are given, both in relation to varieties of sorting technique and in relation to other techniques. It is concluded that the sorting techniques are a valuable part of the elicitor’s methodological toolkit.

Anaesthetists' attitudes to teamwork and safety.

Summary A questionnaire survey was conducted with 222 anaesthetists from 11 Scottish hospitals to measure their attitudes towards human and organisational factors that can have an impact on effective team performance and consequently on patient safety. A customised version of the Operating Room Management Attitude Questionnaire (ORMAQ) was used. This measures attitudes to leadership, communication, teamwork, stress and fatigue, work values, human error and organisational climate. The respondents generally demonstrated positive attitudes towards the interpersonal aspects of their work, such as team behaviours and they recognised the importance of communication skills, such as assertiveness. However, the results suggest that some anaesthetists do not fully appreciate the debilitating effects of stress and fatigue on performance. Their responses were comparable with (and slightly more favourable than) those reported in previous ORMAQ surveys of anaesthetists and surgeons in other countries.

Rating non-technical skills: developing a behavioural marker system for use in anaesthesia

Studies of performance in medicine are often based on observation. Videotape provides a valuable tool for recording events from both real environments and simulators. When analysing observational data it is important that robust tools are used, particularly when investigating non-technical (cognitive and social) skills. This paper describes the method used to identify the key non-technical skills required in anaesthesia and to develop a behavioural marker system for their measurement. A prototype taxonomy was designed on the basis of a literature review; an examination of existing marker systems; cognitive task analysis interviews; an iterative development process involving workshops; and cross-checking in theatre. The resulting anaesthetists’ non-technical skills (ANTS) system comprises four skill categories (task management, team working, situation awareness, and decision making) that divide into 15 elements, each with example behaviours. Preliminary evaluation using ratings of videotaped scenarios indicated that the skills were observable and could be rated with reasonable agreement.

Using Virtual Environments in the Assessment of Executive Dysfunction

A study is reported into the role of virtual environments in the assessment of patients with executive dysfunction. Five patients and five matched controls entered the study. The patients did not differ significantly from normative values on the standard executive dysfunction measure, the Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome battery (Wilson, Alderman, Burgess, Emslie, & Evans, 1996); however, care staff reported the patients had problems planning. Patients and controls undertook both real and virtual environment multiple-errand planning tasks. The patients completed significantly fewer errands, and produced significantly worse plans than did controls in both the real and virtual environments. There was a significant correlation between performance in the real and virtual environments. The results suggest that virtual environments may provide a valid means of assessing planning impairments and that there may be patients with executive dysfunction (specifically planning deficits) that may not be detected by the currently available standardized tests.

Explicit and Implicit Trust Within Safety Culture

Safety culture is an important topic for managers in high-hazard industries because a deficient safety culture has been linked to organizational accidents. Many researchers have argued that trust plays a central role in models of safety culture but trust has rarely been measured in safety culture/climate studies. This article used explicit (direct) and implicit (indirect) measures to assess trust at a UK gas plant. Explicit measures assessed trust by asking workers to consider and state their attitude to attitude objects. Implicit measures assessed trust in a more subtle way by using a priming task that relies on automatic attitude activation. The results show that workers expressed explicit trust for their workmates, supervisors, and senior managers, but only expressed implicit trust for their workmates. The article proposes a model that conceptualizes explicit trust as part of the surface levels of safety culture and implicit trust as part of the deeper levels of safety culture. An unintended finding was the positive relationship between implicit measures of trust and distrust, which suggests that trust and distrust are separate constructs. The article concludes by considering the implications for safety culture and trust and distrust in high-hazard industries.

The relationships between psychometric intelligence and learning in an explicit and an implicit task

An experiment is reported examining the relation of implicit grammar learning and series completion tasks to a standard measure of psychometric intelligence, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R; D. Wechsler, 1981). The results replicate and extend an earlier study by A. S. Reber, F. F. Walkenfeld, and R. Hernstadt (1991) and provide the following support for the differences between explicit and implicit tasks: (a) The implicit task was less strongly related to Full Scale IQ, and (b) the implicit task appeared to be independent of age. The implicit and explicit tasks exhibited a quite different pattern of relations to the factors known to underlie WAIS-R performance. Although both tasks showed significant links with a Perceptual Organization factor, only the series completion task showed a significant link with the Attention factor.

Multiple-target tracking: A role for working memory?

In order to identify the cognitive processes associated with target tracking, a dual-task experiment was carried out in which participants undertook a dynamic multiple-object tracking task first alone and then again, concurrently with one of several secondary tasks, in order to investigate the cognitive processes involved. The research suggests that after designated targets within the visual field have attracted preattentive indexes that point to their locations in space, conscious processes, vulnerable to secondary visual and spatial task interference, form deliberate strategies beneficial to the tracking task, before tracking commences. Target tracking itself is realized by central executive processes, which are sensitive to any other cognitive demands. The findings are discussed in the context of integrating dynamic spatial cognition within a working memory framework.

Understanding Pretrial Publicity: Predecisional Distortion of Evidence by Mock Jurors

Prejudicial pretrial publicity (PTP) constitutes a serious source of juror bias. The current study examined differences in predecisional distortion for mock jurors exposed to negative PTP (N-PTP) versus nonexposed control participants. According to work by K. A. Carlson and J. E. Russo (2001), predecisional distortion occurs when jurors bias new evidence in favor of their current leading party (prosecution or defense) rather than evaluating this information for its actual probative properties. Jury-eligible university students (N=116) acted as jurors in a mock trial. Elevated rates of guilty verdicts were observed in the N-PTP condition. Predecisional distortion scores were significantly higher in the N-PTP condition and reflected a proprosecution bias. The effect of prejudicial PTP on verdict outcomes was mediated by predecisional distortion in the evaluation of testimony. Results are discussed in relation to motivated decision making and confirmation biases.

Biomedical knowledge in diagnostic thinking: The case of electrocardiogram (ECG) interpretation

The role of biomedical knowledge concerning underlying anatomy and pathophysiology in diagnosis has been the subject of considerable controversy in the study of medical expertise. The issue is examined in the present paper in the context of electrocardiogram (ECG) interpretation. A study is reported of three levels of expertise in the diagnosis, explanation and recall of ECG traces varying in difficulty of diagnosis. Expertise effects were found in diagnostic accuracy and confidence and in incidental ECG trace recall following diagnosis. Analyses of think-aloud protocols indicated that biomedical thinking was more prevalent in the ECG domain for experts versus less skilled subjects and in explanation versus diagnostic tasks. Biomedical knowledge was mainly invoked to evaluate possible diagnoses.

Semantic processing in an incidental learning task

Recent research on implicit learning has suggested that perceptual learning could account for the observed dissociation between task performance and associated verbal knowledge. We report three experiments that investigate whether performance in an incidental learning task is based on knowledge held primarily at a perceptual or a semantic level. The results indicate that, under the task conditions described, processing of the semantic content of the stimuli is an automatic process. The implications of this result for implicit learning are discussed.