BEHAVIORAL CONSIDERATIONS OF PERFORMANCE GOALS IN NEUROSCIENCE EDUCATION: A CONTRAST TO TRADITIONAL METHODOLOGY

It was the purpose of this study to examine the acquisition and retention of knowledge and problem solving skills as they relate to clinical neurologic diagnosis and the basic neurosciences. It reviewed the educational and philosophical basis for establishing performance objectives considered to be basic to undergraduate neurologic education. It compared the performance of students taught utilizing a problem solving (behavioral) model with students taught without the benefit of such a model.;Through the use of an instrument referred to as the Neuroscience Basic Quiz (NBQ), a limited portion of the diagnostic skills used by professionals was examined, i.e. the ability to arrive at a clinical diagnostic formulation given a specific preselected series of facts and the ability to answer a series of questions which deal primarily with basic neuroscience material.;In order to test the hypotheses advanced in this study, three methods of inferential statistics were employed using a 0.05 critical value: t-tests for related measures, independent sample t-tests, and one way analysis of variance comparisons (ANOVA).;When comparing performance as measured by the NQB, Neurologists differed significantly from students taught by problem solving methods (behavioral students) in the retention of basic science information only. There were no significant differences demonstrated between the clinical problem solving abilities of neurologists of behavioral students; however, both groups exhibited significanctly better abilities to retain basic science knowledge and to solve clinical problems than did intenists or students who were not taught by problem solving methods (traditional students). Internists were significantly better at clinical problem solving than were traditional students. However, traditional students were significantly better than internists in the retention of basic science knowledge.;Conclusions possible from the study include experience with problem solving is more effective than traditional methods for teaching basic science information; such approaches improve the development of clinical problem solving skills for students in the neurosciences. In addition, clinical diagnostic information once learned with problem solving approaches seems to be retained over time; on the other hand basic science information taught for its own sake appears to deteriorate from the point of instruction.