PROJECT 2 EXAMPLE: Feedback X Prevalence Using Dermatology Stimuli

Imagine that a dermatologist spends the morning seeing patients who have been referred for suspicion of skin cancer. Many of them do, in fact, have skin lesions that require treatment. For this set of patients, disease 'prevalence' would be high. Suppose that the next task is to spend the afternoon giving annual screening exams to members of the general population. Here disease prevalence will be low. Would the morning's work influence decisions about patients in the afternoon? It is known from other contexts that recent history can influence current decisions and that target prevalence has an impact on decisions. In this study, decisions were decisions about skin lesions from individuals with varying degrees of expertise, using an online, medical imaging labelling app (DiagnosUs). This allowed examination of the effects of feedback history and prevalence in a single study. Blocks of trials could be of low or high prevalence, with or without feedback. Over 300,000 individual judgements were collected. (taken from Wolfe, J. M. (2022). How one block of trials influences the next: Persistent effects of disease prevalence and feedback on decisions about images of skin lesions in a large online study. . Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (CRPI), 7, 10. doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-022-00362-0