Realistic simulation-based training in neonatal resuscitation is possible using current technology, is well received by trainees, and offers benefits not inherent in traditional paradigms of medical education.
A set of procedures implemented in Microsoft BASIC is described that creates fragmented versions of pictures scanned into the Apple Macintosh, stores them as resource files, and presents them in a computerized perceptual memory test. A total of 150 pictures were selected from the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) set for fragmentation. The perceptual memory test provides for five forms of 30 pictures each, divided into two sets of 15 that serve alternately as the training or old set and the new set. A training set of 15 pictures is presented for identification during the first (training) phase of the test. The second (test) phase presents the training pictures again, randomly mixed with 15 new pictures for identification. The performance of 100 subjects on the memory test is presented, along with results for each form. Overall, subjects showed improvement on the task with practice (skill learning), indexed by a decrease in thresholds from the training set to the new set. Subjects also showed large savings for the repeated pictures (perceptual learning), indexed by a decrease in thresholds from the new to the old set. This paper describes a set of procedures for fragmenting picture stimuli, storing them as resource files, and presenting them in a computerized test of perceptual learning that runs on an Apple Macintosh Plus. The test follows the GoUin Picture Test (Gollin, 1960) in spirit. In the Gollin test, subjects are shown a series of pictures from which fragments have been deleted, starting with the most fragmented level. Increasingly more complete versions of each picture are shown until all pictures can be identified. Subjects are then retested on the old items to measure perceptual memory. Although the test was initially developed for use with children, it has been used extensively with clinical populations (e.g., Corkin, 1982), following the demonstration by Warrington and Weiskrantz (1968) that amnesic patients show substantial learning and retention as measured by decreased thresholds for repeated pictures after a delay of as long as 3 months. This preserved learning ability in amnesics-along with demonstrations in normal subjects that effects of many variables are dissociated in perceptual, compared with episodic, learning tasks-has led several investigators to postulate
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