Correlates of Cognitive Load in Surrogate Decision Makers of the Critically III

Abstract

Surrogate decision makers (SDMs) of the critically ill experience intense emotions and transient states of decision fatigue. These factors may increase the cognitive load experienced by electronic decision aids. This cross-sectional study explored the associations of emotion regulation (expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal) and decision fatigue with cognitive load (intrinsic and extraneous) among a sample of 97 SDMs of the critically ill. After completing subjective measures of emotion regulation and decision fatigue, participants were exposed to an electronic decision aid and completed a subjective measurement of cognitive load. Multiple regression analyses indicated that decision fatigue predicted intrinsic cognitive load and expressive suppression predicted extraneous cognitive load. Emotion regulation and decision fatigue represent modifiable determinants of cognitive load among SDMs exposed to electronic decision aids.

The first seven years of nationally organized helicopter emergency medical services in Finland – the data from quality registry

“…For patients requiring fast access to critical care to be adequately recognized, a certain amount of overtriage is unavoidable, but excessive overtriage may lead to increased costs and missing simultaneous patients that could have benefitted from HEMS [23]. Having the HEMS physician decide on a large amount of cancellations may also lead to decision fatigue [24,25]., increasing the risk for inappropriate cancellations [25]. The effectiveness of the service could potentially be increased by improving dispatch criteria or by flight paramedic interrogation of the caller [26,27].…”

What We Have Learned about the Characteristics and Differences of Disaster Information Behavior in Social Media—A Case Study of the 7.20 Henan Heavy Rain Flood Disaster

“…The public will exhibit different information behaviors in the event of a disaster depending on the difference in psychological distance. Related research has found that the level of interpretation of events is a function of psychological distance [35,36], and that psychological distance influences the public's perception and decision-making behavior, i.e., people emphasize the goal of the event and view the event's development more abstractly for distant events, and more specifically for what is going to happen soon by emphasizing the means to reach the goal [37,38]. According to the analysis of the spatial distribution characteristics of disaster information behavior in this paper, the majority of the low-level information behavior areas are located in China's northwest region.…”