Interaction Should Guide Management Decisions

Intuitive numbers guide decisions

Measuring reaction times to number comparisons is thought to reveal a processing stage in elementary numerical cognition linked to internal, imprecise representations of number magnitudes. These intuitive representations of the mental number line have been demonstrated across species and human development but have been little explored in decision making. This paper develops and tests hypotheses...

Patients with acute pulmonary embolism should have an echocardiogram to guide treatment decisions.

A 62-year-old man with a past medical history notable for hypertension, osteoarthritis, and calf deep vein thrombosis at age 55 following a total hip arthroplasty presents to the emergency department with acute-onset dyspnea and right-sided pleuritic chest pains. His medications consist of a calcium channel blocker and a COX-2 inhibitor. Pretest clinical suspicion for pulmonary embolism (PE) is...

Making Ethical Decisions. A six-step process should guide ethical decision making in healthcare.

Integrating memories to guide decisions

Adaptive decisions are guided by past experience. Yet, decisions are often made between alternatives that have not been directly experienced before, requiring the integration of memories across multiple past events. We review emerging findings supporting at least two seemingly distinct mechanisms for how the brain draws on memories in the service of choice. Prospective integration is triggered ...

Should neuroconstructivism guide developmental research?

In her recent paper, Usha Goswami [1] argues in favour of developmental studies of developmental dyslexia, a point that has been well appreciated for at least 20 years [2,3]. She also argues in favour of a certain class of theories of dyslexia, namely theories involving a phonological deficit arising from auditory processing problems, a view that has met with some success [4]. More surprising i...