Diagnostic reasoning of high- and low-domain-knowledge clinicians: a reanalysis.

Thinking-aloud protocols provided by Joseph and Patel were reanalyzed to determine the extent to which their conclusions could be replicated by independently developed coding schemes. The data set consisted of protocols from four cardiologists (low domain knowledge = LDK) and four endocrinologists (high domain knowledge = HDK), individually working on a diagnostic problem in endocrinology. The two analyses agree that the HDK physicians related data to potential diagnoses more than did the LDK group and were more focused on the correct diagnostic components.

Computers as clinicians: an update.

Computers as clinicians entered medical settings relatively recently, but with limited success because they lack general intelligence--that is, though they can be experts in domain specific specialties, they cannot yet deal with clinical problems never before encountered. SOAR, a novel AI computer programming architecture, can learn from past encounters with prior problems and can generalize its learning to new ones. It may therefore take computers to a higher level of clinical performance.

Why we still use our heads instead of formulas: toward an integrative approach.

This review begins with a discussion of Meehl's (1957) query regarding when to use one's head (i.e., intuition) instead of the formula (i.