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Biomedical subjects

P Dodwell

Publications and source records attributed to P Dodwell.

10 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

Improved communication between doctors and with managers would benefit professional integrity and reduce the occupational medicine workload.

BACKGROUND: Professional expectations for communication skills are explicit. These skills are needed for professional integrity and personal morale. Nevertheless, occupational physicians see doctors as patients for whom communication among between doctors and with their managers are the principal cause of their presenting health problems. AIM: To describe the frameworks of professionalism in medicine and the duty to care for good communication; present issues surrounding competency in communication skills; identify health problems among doctors associated with poor communication; and consider roles of economic appraisal and preventive strategies. METHOD: A literature review identified key publications of professional expectations and requirements of doctors for their communication skills. Health problems among doctors associated with poor communication and presenting at least twice in a National Health Service (NHS) occupational health (OH) department during January-December 2002, were sought by manual retrieval of all doctor-patient records. The categories of communication difficulty were agreed in the focus group discussion of the presenting problems with occupational physicians. RESULTS: Nine categories of communication difficulties among doctors resulting in their presentation in OH departments with health problems were identified. CONCLUSIONS: Personal health problems caused by poor communication involve considerable time and potential litigation costs. Doctors need to be reminded of their responsibilities. Opportunity cost studies would help to strengthen an evidence base for the need of doctors to adhere to the professional requirements of good communication skills.

Communication↗
PubMed1994

Colored aftereffects contingent upon global transformations?

Dodwell and Humphrey (Psychol. Rev. 97, 78-79, 1990) have argued that colored aftereffects (CAEs) are contingent on the global geometries of local orientation and edge components in induction patterns. The spatiotopic dimensions underlying these geometries are derived from previous applications of the mathematics of continuous transformations (Lie groups) to the stimulus dynamics of perceptual invariance. In these terms, complementary CAEs induced by inspecting alternating colored bullseyes and spokes are attributed to the adaptation of orthogonal spatiotopic channels; the former characterized by vectorfields dealing with object invariance under rotation, and the latter by vectorfields dealing with object invariance under dilation. Importantly, the pattern-contingent CAEs induced in this pair of pattern channels are independent of CAEs induced in channels characterized by vectorfields dealing with object invariance under vertical and horizontal translations (e.g. vertical and horizontal gratings). The present investigation examined whether CAEs contingent on the stimulus dynamics originally used to define these spatiotopic channels exhibit comparable properties. It is confirmed that pairs of complementary CAEs can be induced simultaneously with radially expanding and contracting bullseyes, and clockwise- and counter-clockwise-rotating spokes (Experiment 1); and it is shown that these CAEs combine linearly in generalizing to and from the radial and rotational components of spiral motion (Experiments 2 and 3 respectively). In direct contrast to findings for CAEs induced with stationary versions of these patterns, however, it is demonstrated that complementary pairs of CAEs induced by expanding and contracting bullseyes interact with CAEs induced by left- and right-moving vertical gratings, suggesting that the components of motion underlying these contingent effects are locally and not globally determined (Experiment 4).

Color Perception↗
PubMed1992

Anomalous spiral aftereffects: a new twist to the perception of rotating spirals.

Stationary spirals viewed after inspecting rotating sectored disks appear to rotate and to expand or contract radially, even though the rotating disks contain no perceptible components of radial motion. Moreover, the relative directions of illusory rotation and radial motion observed in these instances are 'impossible' under the stimulus constraints normally imposed by the geometry of a spiral under rotation: the stationary spirals appeared to expand/contract in directions opposite to those normally observed under conditions of actual spiral rotation, and under conditions of illusory spiral rotation in classical spiral aftereffects.

Discrimination Learning↗
PubMed1984

The waggon-wheel effect.

The waggon-wheel effect was studied by use of three wheels with different numbers of spokes (4, 8, 16) and a wide range of strobe temporal frequencies. The results obtained are discussed in terms of a model in which: (i) nearest-neighbour relationships predict the direction and speed of movement, (ii) persistence and masking occur over ranges consistent with values reported in the literature, (iii) apparent motion is generated between currently illuminated spokes and persisting images of spokes, (iv) duration of spoke illumination (sweep) is a determining factor and, (v) a top-down process finds the best fit (a sort of 'simple structure') for the complex spatiotemporal display.

Humans↗
PubMed1980

Infants' orientation to lateral sounds from birth to three months.

Head turning to off-centered sound was videotaped monthly in a group of infants during their first 3 months of life. Infants turned reliably toward the sound at birth and at 1 and 3 months of age. They failed to respond reliably at 2 months due to an increase in no-turn responses. Potential explanations for the temporary decline in orientation responses to sound are discussed.

Auditory Perception↗