Memory in a Messy Domain: Expertise and Memory for Mental Health Disorder Categories

Experience within a domain has profound effects on the way a domain is conceptualized. These types of effects, such as experts showing strikingly better memory than novices, have been robustly demonstrated across a wealth of domains. Despite this tradition, the mental health field has had trouble demonstrating benefits for experience. Does this mean that expertise does not develop in mental health care as it does in other fields? To test this question, participants of varying experience in mental health were tested on their memory of patient information. Trainees were shown to have better memory for facts about patients than Novices and Experts. The findings of this study at the same time replicate the intermediate effect of the medical expertise literature while demonstrating findings unique to the domain of mental health.