Medizin
Refine
Document Type
- Article (2)
Language
- English (2)
Has Fulltext
- yes (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (2)
Keywords
- Decision (2) (remove)
Institute
- Medizin (2)
After removal of a dental implant or extraction of a tooth in the upper jaw, the closure of an oroantral fistula (OAF) or oroantral communication (OAC) can be a difficult problem confronting the dentist and surgeon working in the oral and maxillofacial region. Oroantral communication (OAC) acts as a pathological pathway for bacteria and can cause infection of the antrum, which further obstructs the healing process as it is an unnatural communication between the oral cavity and the maxillary sinus. There are different ways to perform the surgical closure of the OAC. The decision-making in closure of oroantral communication and fistula is influenced by many factors. Consequently, it requires a combination of knowledge, experience, and information gathering. Previous narrative research has focused on assessments and comparisons of various surgical techniques for the closure of OAC/OAF. Thus, the decision-making process has not yet been described comprehensively.
The present study aims to illustrate all the factors that have to be considered in the management of OACs and OAFs that determine optimal treatment.
Spatial attention allows us to make more accurate decisions about events in our environment. Decision confidence is thought to be intimately linked to the decision making process as confidence ratings are tightly coupled to decision accuracy. While both spatial attention and decision confidence have been subjected to extensive research, surprisingly little is known about the interaction between these two processes. Since attention increases performance it might be expected that confidence would also increase. However, two studies investigating the effects of endogenous attention on decision confidence found contradictory results. Here we investigated the effects of two distinct forms of spatial attention on decision confidence; endogenous attention and exogenous attention. We used an orientation-matching task, comparing the two attention conditions (endogenous and exogenous) to a control condition without directed attention. Participants performed better under both attention conditions than in the control condition. Higher confidence ratings than the control condition were found under endogenous attention but not under exogenous attention. This finding suggests that while attention can increase confidence ratings, it must be voluntarily deployed for this increase to take place. We discuss possible implications of this relative overconfidence found only during endogenous attention with respect to the theoretical background of decision confidence.