Pupil diameter differentiates expertise in dental radiography visual search

Expert behavior is characterized by rapid information processing abilities, dependent on more structured schemata in long-term memory designated for their domain-specific tasks. From this understanding, expertise can effectively reduce cognitive load on a domain-specific task. However, certain tasks...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2020-05, Vol.15 (5), p.e0223941-e0223941
Main Authors: Castner, Nora, Appel, Tobias, Eder, Thérése, Richter, Juliane, Scheiter, Katharina, Keutel, Constanze, Hüttig, Fabian, Duchowski, Andrew, Kasneci, Enkelejda
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anomalies
Appel, Andrew
Biology and Life Sciences
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive ability
Cognitive load
Computer science
Data processing
Decision making
Dentistry
Dentists
Diameters
Experts
Eye movements
Human performance
Human-computer interaction
Information processing
Long term memory
Maxillofacial surgery
Measurement techniques
Medicine and Health Sciences
Memory
Physiological aspects
Professionals
Psychological research
Pupil (Eye)
Radiographs
Radiography
Social Sciences
Students
Visual perception
Visual search behavior
Workloads
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Summary:Expert behavior is characterized by rapid information processing abilities, dependent on more structured schemata in long-term memory designated for their domain-specific tasks. From this understanding, expertise can effectively reduce cognitive load on a domain-specific task. However, certain tasks could still evoke different gradations of load even for an expert, e.g., when having to detect subtle anomalies in dental radiographs. Our aim was to measure pupil diameter response to anomalies of varying levels of difficulty in expert and student dentists' visual examination of panoramic radiographs. We found that students' pupil diameter dilated significantly from baseline compared to experts, but anomaly difficulty had no effect on pupillary response. In contrast, experts' pupil diameter responded to varying levels of anomaly difficulty, where more difficult anomalies evoked greater pupil dilation from baseline. Experts thus showed proportional pupillary response indicative of increasing cognitive load with increasingly difficult anomalies, whereas students showed pupillary response indicative of higher cognitive load for all anomalies when compared to experts.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0223941