Regret over failing to diagnose aggressive prostate cancer is associated with a policy of ordering PSAs. This regret appears to be culturally sensitive.
This study examined the effect of outcome feedback on learning the multiplicative relationship between daily intakes of tobacco and alcohol, and the risk of esophageal cancer. In the first of two experiments, 65 French adults judged the risk of esophageal cancer associated with combinations of five levels of intake of tobacco and five of wine. They made these judgments both before and after learning sessions in which they were shown the actual risk for each vignette. In the second experiment, 35 French adults underwent the same testing and learning, and were re-tested twice 1 month later. The study hypotheses were supported. First, prior to the learning sessions, the participants used a subadditive rule to combine the perceived risk of esophageal cancer from smoking and drinking. Second, they learned after only one training session to change to the multiplicative rule that is consistent with epidemiological data. Third, this learning persisted for 1 month. This methodology may prove useful in correcting people's underestimation of their health risks.
The objective of the study was to examine some of the conditions under which elderly people are able to learn probabilistic inverse relationships and when this type of learning is no longer possible. Two kind of tasks were used: (a) two single-cue learning tasks with either direct or inverse relationships (the Single-Cue Probability Learning paradigm), and (b) three two-cue learning tasks, one with two direct relationships, one with a combination of direct and inverse relationships, and one with two inverse relationships (the Multiple-Cue Probability Learning paradigm). Four groups of participants were included in the study: young adults (18- to 25-year-olds), adults (40- to 50-year-olds), elderly people (65- to 74-year-olds), and very elderly people (75- to 90-year-olds). It was shown that (a) older adults are able to reject the direct relationship "default" hypothesis and select the inverse relationship hypothesis when outcome feedback contradicting the default hypothesis is given, and provided that the learning setting be a very simple one, involving only one cue; (b) some older adults are able to select the inverse relationship hypothesis provided that the learning setting be a simple one,involving only two inverse relationship cues; and (c) very few older adults are able to select the inverse relationship hypothesis when the learning setting is a complex one, involving two cues with both direct and inverse relationships with the criterion. These results led to the revision of the "gradual decrease of cognitive flexibility in older adults" hypothesis proposed by Chasseigne, Mullet, and Stewart (Acta Psychologicgrave;a, 103, 229-238, 1997).
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