Top-Down Processing of Drug Names Can Induce Errors in Discriminating Similar Pseudo-Drug Names by Nurses

2020 ◽  
pp. 001872082094660
Author(s):  
Junko Mitobe ◽  
Takahiro Higuchi
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Error Rate ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Error Prevention ◽  
Similar Drug ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Drug Names

Background One factor that could cause medical errors is confusing medicines with similar names. A previous study showed that nurses who have knowledge about drugs faced difficulty in discriminating a drug name from similar pseudo-drug names. To avoid such errors, finger-pointing and calling (FPC) has been recommended in Japan. Objectives The present study had two aims. The first was to determine whether such difficulty was due to top-down processing, rather than bottom-up processing, being applied even for pseudo-names. The other was to investigate whether FPC affected error prevention for similar drug names. Method In two experiments, nurses and non–health care professionals performed a choice reaction time task for drug names and common words, with or without FPC. Error rate and reaction time were analyzed. Results When drug names were used, nurses showed difficulty discriminating target names from distractors. Furthermore, the error prevention effect of FPC was marginally significant for drug names. However, nurses showed no significant differences when similar drug names were used. There was no significant difference regarding the error rate for words. Conclusions Nurses’ knowledge of drug names activates top-down processing. As a result, the processing of drug names was not as accurate and quick as that for words for nurses, which caused difficulty in discriminating similar names. FPC may be applicable to reduce confusion errors, possibly by leading individuals to process drug names using bottom-up processing. Application The present study advances current knowledge about error tendencies with similar drug names and the effects of FPC on error prevention.

scholarly journals Inhibitory Top-Down Control Deficits in Schizophrenia With Auditory Verbal Hallucinations: A Go/NoGo Task

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiaoling Sun ◽  
Yehua Fang ◽  
Yongyan Shi ◽  
Lifeng Wang ◽  
Xuemei Peng ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Auditory Verbal Hallucinations ◽  
Parietal Area ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Patient Groups ◽  
P3 Amplitude

Objective: Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH), with unclear mechanisms, cause extreme distresses to schizophrenia patients. Deficits of inhibitory top-down control may be linked to AVH. Therefore, in this study, we focused on inhibitory top-down control in schizophrenia patients with AVH.Method: The present study recruited 40 schizophrenia patients, including 20 AVH patients and 20 non-AVH patients, and 23 healthy controls. We employed event-related potentials to investigate the N2 and P3 amplitude and latency differences among these participants during a Go/NoGo task.Results: Relative to healthy controls, the two patient groups observed longer reaction time (RT) and reduced accuracy. The two patient groups had smaller NoGo P3 amplitude than the healthy controls, and the AVH patients showed smaller NoGo P3 amplitude than the non-AVH patients. In all the groups, the parietal area showed smaller NoGo P3 than frontal and central areas. However, no significant difference was found in N2 and Go P3 amplitude between the three groups.Conclusions: AVH patients might have worse inhibitory top-down control, which might be involved in the occurrence of AVH. Hopefully, our results could enhance understanding of the pathology of AVH.

Bottom-up rather than top-down: evidence from Middle Eastern and North African educational institutions

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 671-690
Author(s):  
Osama Mah'd
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
North African ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Managerial Performance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The Difference

PurposeEducational institutions in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are striving for better resource management and finance. The bottom-up budgeting approach plays an important role in motivating executives' performance. The main aim of this paper is to discover whether there is a significant difference between bottom-up and a top-down approaches to budgeting in terms of managers' performance.Design/methodology/approachQuestionnaires were distributed to 453 university executives in 21 MENA educational institutions. The Kruskal–Wallis test was utilized to test the difference between the three groups (bottom-up, top-down and consultative approaches). Further analysis was conducted to test the difference between the two groups using the Mann–Whitney test.FindingsThe results show that there is a significant difference between a bottom-up and top-down approach in terms of managerial performance. The study's findings indicate that the bottom-up approach to budgeting leads to higher performance indicators than a top-down approach to budgeting.Originality/valueThe current study contributes to the research as it increases awareness of budgeting approaches that are used in higher education institutions, specifically in terms of the effect of these differences on executives' performance.

Distractibility When Suffering from Mental Fatigue after a Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johansson B ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Injury ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Processing Speed ◽  
Brain Injuries ◽  
Mental Fatigue ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Cognitive Difficulties ◽  
Processing Information

Most Traumatic Brain Injuries are mild (mTBI) yet many people suffer from long-term mental fatigue and cognitive impairment. Despite comments from patients, cognitive difficulties can go undetected. Distractibility is commonly reported but is seldom included in standard neuropsychological assessment. This study was designed to investigate the effect distraction may induce in topdown and bottom-up attention among people who suffer from mental fatigue after mTBI. Thirty mTBI patients suffering from mental fatigue and 30 healthy controls performed a computerized test, including Simple Reaction Time, Choice Reaction Time and Attentional Capture tasks with a salient distractor. A slower processing speed was found in all subtests for the mTBI group and was particularly noticeable for the decision-making task. The distraction stimulus reduced processing speed for both groups, while the mTBI group made more omissions when a distractor emerged, indicating increased distractibility. However, no effect in top-down and bottom-up attention was found. Response time in the presence of a distractor was a predictor for mental fatigue, while depression and anxiety were not, showing the importance to carefully distinguish between emotional distress and mental fatigue. In conclusion, it is suggested that people suffering from mental fatigue after mTBI are slower at processing information, and this is more pronounced when a cognitive demand is added to the task. Distractibility was indicated with more omissions during distraction, but a distinction between top-down and bottom-up systems was not found. Further research is needed to better understand the link between distractibility and mental fatigue after a brain injury.

scholarly journals Accuracy of Discriminating between Similar Drug Names by Nurses: Effect of Finger-pointing on Error Prevention

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Junko Mitobe ◽  
Takahiro Higuchi
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time Task ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
Error Prevention ◽  
Target Drug ◽  
Complex Stimuli ◽  
Similar Drug ◽  
Drug Names ◽  
Prevent Medication Error ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Degree Of Similarity

Discriminating between similar drug names accurately is important in order to prevent medication error. To facilitate accurate discrimination, performing finger-pointing toward drug names to recognize them is recommended in Japan for healthcare workers. We investigate whether nurses would accurately recognize the difference between target and similar drug names and whether finger-pointing would lead to error prevention for drug names by using a choice reaction time task. Participants observed six drug names with or without pointing with the index finger and determined as quickly and accurately as possible whether the target drug name was present. Targets were real drug names, although distractors were pseudo names so as to strictly manipulate the degree of similarity. The results showed that error rates were significantly higher for nurses than for students. Due to their familiarity with the drug names, the nurses could misrecognize the pseudo words as target drug names when a quick response was requested. We also found that nurses did not receive a benefit from finger-pointing. Moreover, finger-pointing may have been inadequate to lead to accurate recognition of complex stimuli, such as drug names.

Glycoproteomics: a powerful tool for characterizing the diverse glycoforms of bacterial pilins and flagellins

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 1307-1313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul G. Hitchen ◽  
Katie Twigger ◽  
Esmeralda Valiente ◽  
Rebecca H. Langdon ◽  
Brendan W. Wren ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Structural Analysis ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Genomic Data ◽  
High Sensitivity ◽  
Mass Spectrometric ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Bacterial Proteins

With glycosylation now firmly established across both Archaeal and bacterial proteins, a wide array of glycan diversity has become evident from structural analysis and genomic data. These discoveries have been built in part on the development and application of mass spectrometric technologies to the bacterial glycoproteome. This review highlights recent findings using high sensitivity MS of the large variation of glycans that have been reported on flagellin and pilin proteins of bacteria, using both ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ approaches to the characterization of these glycoproteins. We summarize current knowledge of the sugar modifications that have been observed on flagellins and pilins, in terms of both the diverse repertoire of monosaccharides observed, and the assemblage of moieties that decorate many of these sugars.

Visual vs. Tactile Reaction Testing Demonstrates Problems with Online Cognitive Testing

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeehyun Kim ◽  
Eric Francisco ◽  
Jameson Holden ◽  
Rachel Lensch ◽  
Bryan Kirsch ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Computer Systems ◽  
Cognitive Testing ◽  
Time Variability ◽  
Reaction Time Variability ◽  
Technical Problems ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Time Test ◽  
Reaction Time Test

Reaction time is one of the most commonly used measures in online cognitive assessments.  However, there are significant technical problems with the methods that are commonly deployed for obtaining this measure.  Most online cognitive toolkits obtain reaction time measures with a visual cue and some type of mechanical response (keyboard, mouse or touchscreen).  Both the hardware and software involved in the computer systems that these online cognitive tests depend on introduce significant delays and more significantly, variation in these delays.  The variability that is introduced by these systems leads to inaccurate results that health care professionals have come to rely on.  In this report, a comparison is made between the reaction time data collected with a tactile based device that is accurately calibrated to sub-millisecond accuracy (the Brain Gauge) to a visual reaction time test that relies on consumer grade computer systems in a manner that parallels the methods commonly used in online cognitive testing.  Forty healthy controls took both the tactile based and visually based reaction time test, and the results demonstrated a significant difference in both reaction time and reaction time variability.  Most significant was the difference in reaction time variability, which was 16 msec for the tactile test and 81 msec for the visual test.  While the differences could be partially accounted for by tactile vs. visual biological pathways, the variability of the results from the visual task are in the range predicted by error measured from previous reports that performed robotic testing to derive differences between the two modalities of testing.

scholarly journals A paradigm for investigating the effects of top-down processes on visual search

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnab Biswas ◽  
Devpriya Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Pairwise Comparison ◽  
Search Performance ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
Selection History ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The Difference

Searching for things is an essential part of our everyday life. The way we search gives us clues on how our cognitive processes function. Scientists have used the visual search task to study attention, perception, and memory. Visual search performance depends upon a combination of stimulus-driven, bottom-up information, goal-oriented, top-down information, and selection history bias. It is difficult to separate these factors due to their close interaction. Our current study presents a paradigm to isolate the effects of top-down factors in visual search. In our experiments, we asked subjects to perform two different search tasks. A part of the total trials in each of these tasks had the same bottom-up information. That is, they had the same target, distractor, and target-distractor arrangement. We controlled for selection history bias by having an equivalent proportion of target types for all tasks and randomized the trial-order for each subject. We compared the mean response times for the critical trials, which had identical bottom-up information shared across the two pairs of tasks. The results showed a significant difference in mean response times of critical trials for both our experiments. Thus, this paradigm allows us to compare the difference in top-down guidance when controlling for bottom-up factors. Pairwise comparison of top-down guidance for different features given the same bottom-up information allows us to ask interesting questions such as, “Visual search guidance for which features can or cannot be easily increased by top-down processes?” Answers to these questions can further shed light on the ecological and evolutionary importance of such features in perception.

Similar Drug Names a Growing Cause of Errors

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 51 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRUCE K. DIXON
Keyword(s):  
Similar Drug ◽  
Drug Names

How Useful is the Power Law of Practice for Recognizing Practice in Concentration Tests?

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 157-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Hagemeister
Keyword(s):  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Power Law ◽  
Error Rate ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Practice Effect ◽  
Practice Effects ◽  
Rate Decrease ◽  
Small Practice

Abstract. When concentration tests are completed repeatedly, reaction time and error rate decrease considerably, but the underlying ability does not improve. In order to overcome this validity problem this study aimed to test if the practice effect between tests and within tests can be useful in determining whether persons have already completed this test. The power law of practice postulates that practice effects are greater in unpracticed than in practiced persons. Two experiments were carried out in which the participants completed the same tests at the beginning and at the end of two test sessions set about 3 days apart. In both experiments, the logistic regression could indeed classify persons according to previous practice through the practice effect between the tests at the beginning and at the end of the session, and, less well but still significantly, through the practice effect within the first test of the session. Further analyses showed that the practice effects correlated more highly with the initial performance than was to be expected for mathematical reasons; typically persons with long reaction times have larger practice effects. Thus, small practice effects alone do not allow one to conclude that a person has worked on the test before.

Psychology and Culture: Top Down Versus Bottom Up?

PsycCRITIQUES ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (19) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cole
Keyword(s):  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document