Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making
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In contingency judgment a primacy effect exists when a conclusion about the relationship between clinical variables is inordinately influenced by cases seen earlier rather than later in a presentation sequence. In this study, medical and nursing trainees evidenced this behavior in a hypothetical clinical judgment situation. ⋯ A related, but less explicit, intervention was also tried. This intervention did not significantly reduce primacy effects among nursing students, but was somewhat effective among general undergraduate students performing a non-clinical contingency judgment task.