Visual perceptual learning of mammographic lesions

Human subjects (n = 72, college-age) without any medical experience were trained to detect different types of mammographic lesions indicative of breast cancer (calcification lesion, distortion lesion) among normal mammograms. The content of feedback about response accuracy after each trial of training was varied between different subject groups. Specifically, subjects either received detailed feedback, or partial feedback, or no feedback about response accuracy after each trial of training. There was a total of n = 12 subjects for each combination of trained lesion (calcification, distortion) and content of response feedback (detailed, partial, none). Subjects completed a pretest, three training sessions and a posttest. Furthermore, a subset of trained subjects was available for a retest conducted six months after the posttest. Each session was conducted on a separate day. The results show that learning from pretest to posttest occurred for both types of lesions with detailed feedback during training. Learning also occurred for calcification lesions with partial feedback. Learning for both types of lesions was retained during the retest with detailed feedback during training.

本研究招募72名无医学背景的大学生受试者，训练其在正常乳腺钼靶影像（mammogram）中识别提示乳腺癌的不同类型乳腺钼靶病变：钙化病变、畸变病变。每次训练试次后，针对作答准确性的反馈内容会因受试者组别而异：受试者分别会获得详细反馈、部分反馈，或完全无作答准确性反馈。针对每种训练病变类型（钙化、畸变）与反馈内容类型（详细、部分、无反馈）的组合，每组受试者均为12人。受试者依次完成前测、三次训练课程与后测。此外，部分完成训练的受试者在结束后测六个月后接受了重测。所有测试与训练环节均在不同日期单独开展。研究结果显示：对于训练过程中采用详细反馈的两种病变类型，受试者均从前测到后测出现了学习效果；对于采用部分反馈的钙化病变，同样观测到学习效果；而训练时采用详细反馈的受试者，其两种病变的学习效果在六个月后的重测中均得以保留。