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Academic Medicine : Journal of the... May 2014Critical thinking is essential to a health professional's competence to assess, diagnose, and care for patients. Defined as the ability to apply higher-order cognitive... (Review)
Review
Critical thinking is essential to a health professional's competence to assess, diagnose, and care for patients. Defined as the ability to apply higher-order cognitive skills (conceptualization, analysis, evaluation) and the disposition to be deliberate about thinking (being open-minded or intellectually honest) that lead to action that is logical and appropriate, critical thinking represents a "meta-competency" that transcends other knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors required in health care professions. Despite its importance, the developmental stages of critical thinking have not been delineated for nurses and physicians. As part of a task force of educators who considered different developmental stage theories, the authors have iteratively refined and proposed milestones in critical thinking. The attributes associated with unreflective, beginning, practicing, advanced, accomplished, and challenged critical thinkers are conceived as independent of an individual's level of training. Depending on circumstances and environmental factors, even the most experienced clinician may demonstrate attributes associated with a challenged thinker. The authors use the illustrative case of a patient with abdominal pain to demonstrate how critical thinking may manifest in learners at different stages of development, analyzing how the learner at each stage applies information obtained in the patient interaction to arrive at a differential diagnosis and plan for evaluation. The authors share important considerations and provide this work as a foundation for the development of effective approaches to teaching and promoting critical thinking and to establishing expectations for learners in this essential meta-competency.
Topics: Clinical Competence; Education, Medical; Education, Nursing; Female; Humans; Male; Models, Educational; Problem Solving; Professional Competence; Thinking
PubMed: 24667504
DOI: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000000220 -
Metacontrol of human creativity: The neurocognitive mechanisms of convergent and divergent thinking.NeuroImage Apr 2020Creativity is a complex construct that would benefit from a more comprehensive mechanistic approach. Two processes have been defined to be central to creative cognition:... (Review)
Review
Creativity is a complex construct that would benefit from a more comprehensive mechanistic approach. Two processes have been defined to be central to creative cognition: divergent and convergent thinking. These two processes are most often studied using the Alternate Uses Test (heavily relying on divergent thinking), and the Remote Associates Test (heavily relying on convergent thinking, at least with analytical solutions). Although creative acts should be regarded compound processes, most behavioral and neuroimaging studies ignore the composition of basic operations relevant for the task they investigate. In order to provide leverage for a more mechanistic, and eventually even comprehensive computational, approach to creative cognition, we compare findings from divergent and convergent thinking studies and review the similarities and differences between the two underlying types of processes, from a neurocognitive perspective with a strong focus on cortical structures. In this narrative review, we discuss a broad scope of neural correlates of divergent and convergent thinking. We provide a first step towards theoretical integration, by suggesting that creative cognition in divergent- and convergent-thinking heavy tasks is modulated by metacontrol states, where divergent thinking and insight solutions in convergent-thinking tasks seem to benefit from metacontrol biases towards flexibility, whereas convergent, analytical thinking seems to benefit from metacontrol biases towards persistence. These particular biases seem to be reflected by specific cortical brain-activation patterns, involving left frontal and right temporal/parietal networks. Our tentative framework could serve as a first proxy to guide neuroscientific creativity research into assessing more mechanistic details of human creative cognition.
Topics: Cerebral Cortex; Creativity; Humans; Metacognition; Nerve Net; Thinking
PubMed: 31972282
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116572 -
Current Biology : CB May 2017The experience of beauty is a pleasure, but common sense and philosophy suggest that feeling beauty differs from sensuous pleasures such as eating or sex. Immanuel Kant...
The experience of beauty is a pleasure, but common sense and philosophy suggest that feeling beauty differs from sensuous pleasures such as eating or sex. Immanuel Kant [1, 2] claimed that experiencing beauty requires thought but that sensuous pleasure can be enjoyed without thought and cannot be beautiful. These venerable hypotheses persist in models of aesthetic processing [3-7] but have never been tested. Here, participants continuously rated the pleasure felt from a nominally beautiful or non-beautiful stimulus and then judged whether they had experienced beauty. The stimuli, which engage various senses, included seeing images, tasting candy, and touching a teddy bear. The observer reported the feelings that the stimulus evoked. The time course of pleasure, across stimuli, is well-fit by a model with one free parameter: pleasure amplitude. Pleasure amplitude increases linearly with the feeling of beauty. To test Kant's claim of a need for thought, we reduce cognitive capacity by adding a "two-back" task to distract the observer's thoughts. The distraction greatly reduces the beauty and pleasure experienced from stimuli that otherwise produce strong pleasure and spares that of less-pleasant stimuli. We also find that strong pleasure is always beautiful, whether produced reliably by beautiful stimuli or just occasionally by sensuous stimuli. In sum, we confirm Kant's claim that only the pleasure associated with feeling beauty requires thought and disprove his claim that sensuous pleasures cannot be beautiful.
Topics: Beauty; Cognition; Emotions; Female; Humans; Male; Pleasure; Sensation; Thinking; Visual Perception; Young Adult
PubMed: 28502660
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.04.018 -
Proceedings of the National Academy of... Sep 2015The ability to make decisions based on data, with its inherent uncertainties and variability, is a complex and vital skill in the modern world. The need for such...
The ability to make decisions based on data, with its inherent uncertainties and variability, is a complex and vital skill in the modern world. The need for such quantitative critical thinking occurs in many different contexts, and although it is an important goal of education, that goal is seldom being achieved. We argue that the key element for developing this ability is repeated practice in making decisions based on data, with feedback on those decisions. We demonstrate a structure for providing suitable practice that can be applied in any instructional setting that involves the acquisition of data and relating that data to scientific models. This study reports the results of applying that structure in an introductory physics laboratory course. Students in an experimental condition were repeatedly instructed to make and act on quantitative comparisons between datasets, and between data and models, an approach that is common to all science disciplines. These instructions were slowly faded across the course. After the instructions had been removed, students in the experimental condition were 12 times more likely to spontaneously propose or make changes to improve their experimental methods than a control group, who performed traditional experimental activities. The students in the experimental condition were also four times more likely to identify and explain a limitation of a physical model using their data. Students in the experimental condition also showed much more sophisticated reasoning about their data. These differences between the groups were seen to persist into a subsequent course taken the following year.
Topics: Algorithms; Decision Making; Educational Measurement; Humans; Physics; Reproducibility of Results; Research; Students; Teaching; Thinking; Universities
PubMed: 26283351
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1505329112 -
Autism : the International Journal of... Jul 2023Daniel Kahneman wrote a highly influential book titled 'thinking, fast and slow'. He proposes that people usually think in a rapid, automatic, intuitive style. When...
Daniel Kahneman wrote a highly influential book titled 'thinking, fast and slow'. He proposes that people usually think in a rapid, automatic, intuitive style. When people realise their intuitive thinking may be wrong, a slower, effortful, deliberative style of thinking takes over. It has recently been proposed that thinking in autistic individuals can be characterised as usually thinking in the deliberative style (rather than the intuitive style that non-autistic people usually think in).As intuitive thinking is fast and deliberative thinking is slow, this research manipulated the time available to complete a series of reasoning questions. These questions have been developed to have intuitive answers (which are incorrect) and deliberative answers (which are correct). For the first time, a fast time manipulation (you must answer quickly) and slow (you must think about your answer before responding) was undertaken with autistic individuals. Autistic participants did produce more deliberative answers than the non-autistic participants. However, both groups produced comparably more intuitive answers and less deliberative answers in the fast condition. This shows that while autistic people tend not to use their intuition, autistic people can be encouraged to use their intuition.Using rapid intuition can be useful in fast-changing contexts, such as some social situations. Future research can explore how to support autistic individuals to use their intuition when the need arises. In addition, the propensity for deliberation resulting in unbiased, correct responses reflects a strengths-based account of autism. This requires more mental effort and is less susceptible to bias and errors. This is called 'Dual Process Theory'.
Topics: Male; Humans; Thinking; Autistic Disorder; Autism Spectrum Disorder; Problem Solving; Intuition
PubMed: 36325717
DOI: 10.1177/13623613221132437 -
Neurobiology of Learning and Memory Jan 2015This article considers two recent lines of research concerned with the construction of imagined or simulated events that can provide insight into the relationship...
This article considers two recent lines of research concerned with the construction of imagined or simulated events that can provide insight into the relationship between memory and decision making. One line of research concerns episodic future thinking, which involves simulating episodes that might occur in one's personal future, and the other concerns episodic counterfactual thinking, which involves simulating episodes that could have happened in one's personal past. We first review neuroimaging studies that have examined the neural underpinnings of episodic future thinking and episodic counterfactual thinking. We argue that these studies have revealed that the two forms of episodic simulation engage a common core network including medial parietal, prefrontal, and temporal regions that also supports episodic memory. We also note that neuroimaging studies have documented neural differences between episodic future thinking and episodic counterfactual thinking, including differences in hippocampal responses. We next consider behavioral studies that have delineated both similarities and differences between the two kinds of episodic simulation. The evidence indicates that episodic future and counterfactual thinking are characterized by similarly reduced levels of specific detail compared with episodic memory, but that the effects of repeatedly imagining a possible experience have sharply contrasting effects on the perceived plausibility of those events during episodic future thinking versus episodic counterfactual thinking. Finally, we conclude by discussing the functional consequences of future and counterfactual simulations for decisions.
Topics: Brain; Decision Making; Humans; Imagination; Memory, Episodic; Nerve Net; Thinking; Time Factors
PubMed: 24373942
DOI: 10.1016/j.nlm.2013.12.008 -
Trends in Cognitive Sciences Dec 2019Humans often represent and reason about unrealized possible actions - the vast infinity of things that were not (or have not yet been) chosen. This capacity is central... (Review)
Review
Humans often represent and reason about unrealized possible actions - the vast infinity of things that were not (or have not yet been) chosen. This capacity is central to the most impressive of human abilities: causal reasoning, planning, linguistic communication, moral judgment, etc. Nevertheless, how do we select possible actions that are worth considering from the infinity of unrealized actions that are better left ignored? We review research across the cognitive sciences, and find that the possible actions considered by default are those that are both likely to occur and generally valuable. We then offer a unified theory of why. We propose that (i) across diverse cognitive tasks, the possible actions we consider are biased towards those of general practical utility, and (ii) a plausible primary function for this mechanism resides in decision making.
Topics: Cognition; Humans; Models, Theoretical; Thinking
PubMed: 31676214
DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2019.09.007 -
American Journal of Pharmaceutical... May 2017Metacognition is an essential skill in critical thinking and self-regulated, lifelong learning. It is important for learners to have skills in metacognition because they... (Review)
Review
Metacognition is an essential skill in critical thinking and self-regulated, lifelong learning. It is important for learners to have skills in metacognition because they are used to monitor and regulate reasoning, comprehension, and problem-solving, which are fundamental components/outcomes of pharmacy curricula. Instructors can help learners develop metacognitive skills within the classroom and experiential setting by carefully designing learning activities within courses and the curriculum. These skills are developed through intentional questioning, modeling techniques, and reflection. This article discusses key background literature on metacognition and identifies specific methods and strategies to develop learners' metacognitive skills in both the classroom and experiential settings.
Topics: Education, Pharmacy; Health Occupations; Humans; Learning; Medical Errors; Metacognition; Problem Solving; Thinking
PubMed: 28630519
DOI: 10.5688/ajpe81478 -
TheScientificWorldJournal 2012This paper focuses on discussing critical thinking and creative thinking as the core cognitive competence. It reviews and compares several theories of thinking,... (Review)
Review
This paper focuses on discussing critical thinking and creative thinking as the core cognitive competence. It reviews and compares several theories of thinking, highlights the features of critical thinking and creative thinking, and delineates their interrelationships. It discusses cognitive competence as a positive youth development construct by linking its relationships with adolescent development and its contributions to adolescents' learning and wellbeing. Critical thinking and creative thinking are translated into self-regulated cognitive skills for adolescents to master and capitalize on, so as to facilitate knowledge construction, task completion, problem solving, and decision making. Ways of fostering these thinking skills, cognitive competence, and ultimately positive youth development are discussed.
Topics: Adolescent; Adolescent Development; Creativity; Humans; Problem Solving; Thinking
PubMed: 22654575
DOI: 10.1100/2012/210953 -
Journal of Medicine and Life Jun 2023Reflective case discussion (RCD) is a reflective activity conducted by nurses, midwives, and other healthcare workers to enhance their skills, critical thinking, and... (Review)
Review
Reflective case discussion (RCD) is a reflective activity conducted by nurses, midwives, and other healthcare workers to enhance their skills, critical thinking, and knowledge. This systematic review follows the PRISMA Guideline checklist and includes articles from various databases, such as Scopus, PubMed, ProQuest, and ScienceDirect. The quality assessment of each article was performed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP). During the initial database search, we retrieved 997 articles from Scopus, 700 articles from ProQuest, 357,554 articles from PubMed, and 1,526 articles from ScienceDirect. The search was conducted using relevant keywords, including "reflective case discussion," "nursing," "critical thinking," "skills," and "knowledge." Following the inclusion and exclusion criteria, eight relevant articles were identified, excluding duplicate studies, limited to full papers, open access, conducted in a hospital setting, and written in English. The findings demonstrate that RCD effectively enhances nurses' skills, critical thinking, and knowledge, contributing to their professionalism in patient care. RCD also proved beneficial in preventing repetitive mistakes and promoting teamwork among nurses. Thus, RCD should be embraced as a valuable form of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and integrated into nurses' ongoing learning processes.
Topics: Humans; Concept Formation; Thinking; Learning; Health Personnel; Hospitals
PubMed: 37675174
DOI: 10.25122/jml-2023-0042