Eyes-on training and radiological expertise: an examination of expertise development and its effects on visual working memory

OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to examine the specificity of the effects of acquiring expertise on visual working memory (VWM) and the degree to which higher levels of experience within the domain of expertise are associated with more efficient use of VWM. BACKGROUND: Previous research is inconsistent on whether expertise effects are specific to the area of expertise or generalize to other tasks that also involve the same cognitive processes. It is also unclear whether more training and/or experience will lead to continued improvement on domain-relevant tasks or whether a plateau could be reached. METHOD: In Experiment I, veterinary medicine students completed a one-shot visual change detection task. In Experiment 2, veterinarians completed a flicker change detection task. Both experiments involved stimuli specific to the domain of radiology and general stimuli. RESULTS: In Experiment I, veterinary medicine students who had completed an eyes-on radiological training demonstrated a domain-specific effect in which performance was better on the domain-specific stimuli than on the domain-general stimuli. In Experiment 2, veterinarians again showed a domain-specific effect, but performance was unrelated to the amount of experience veterinarians had accumulated. CONCLUSION: The effect of experience is domain specific and occurs during the first few years of training, after which a plateau is reached. APPLICATION: VWM training in one domain may not lead to improved performance on other VWM tasks. In acquiring expertise, eyes-on training is important initially, but continued experience may not be associated with further improvements in the efficiency of VWM

Knowledge of memory aging across the lifespan

The authors examined knowledge of normal and pathological memory aging in a lifespan sample of 198 individuals who ranged in age from 13 to 88 years. Participants completed the Knowledge of Memory Aging Questionnaire (Cherry, Brigman, Hawley, & Reese, 2003). The authors hypothesized that high school students would be less knowledgeable about memory aging issues than college students, middle-aged, and community-dwelling older adults. Consistent with this hypothesis, response accuracy was lower for high school students compared to their older counterparts. Follow-up analyses revealed that high school students\u27 responses to a subset of questions that tap ageist views of adult cognition were less accurate than the other age groups, implying a response bias toward stereotypical images of memory aging. Implications for research and the design of instructional materials to increase people\u27s knowledge about normative changes in adult cognition are discussed

Working memory in the oldest-old: evidence from output serial position curves

We examined adult age differences in short-term and working memory performance in middle-aged (45–64 years), young-old (65–74 years), old-old (75–89 years) and oldest-old adults (90 years and over) in the Louisiana Healthy Aging Study. Previous research suggests that measures of working memory are more sensitive to age effects than simple tests of short-term memory (Bopp & Verhaeghen, 2005; Myerson, Emery, White, & Hale, 2003). To test this hypothesis, we examined output serial position curves of recall data from three span tasks: forward and backward digit span and size judgment span. Participants’ recall patterns in the size judgment span task revealed that the two oldest groups of adults showed the largest decreases in recall performance across output serial positions, but did not differ significantly from each other. Correlation analyses indicated the strongest negative correlation with age occurred with the size judgment span task. Implications of these findings for understanding strategic processing abilities in late life are discussed

Self-Reported Ageism Across the Lifespan: Role of Aging Knowledge

The authors examined the prevalence of self-reported ageist behaviors in a lifespan sample ranging in age from 13 to 91 years. Participants completed the Relating to Older People Evaluation (Cherry & Palmore). Results indicated that adolescents and young adults reported fewer ageist behaviors overall than did middle-aged and older adults. Positive ageist behaviors were more frequent than negative ageist behaviors for people of all ages. Women endorsed positive ageism items more often than men, although men and women did not differ in frequency of negative ageist behaviors. Follow-up analyses on participants\u27 responses to two knowledge of aging measures, the Facts on Aging Quiz and the Knowledge of Memory Aging Questionnaire, showed that knowledge of aging was significantly correlated with negative ageist behaviors, after controlling for age and gender. Implications of these findings for current views of ageism (positive and negative) are discussed