Visualizing cognitive processes in medical education: Forward and backward reasoning in a digital family medicine assessment
Johanna Klutmann, Constanze Dietzsch, Ute Schlasius-Ratter, Alexander Oksche, Sara Volz-Willems, Sandra Jordan, Johannes Jäger, Fabian Dupont · 2026
Read Visualizing cognitive processes in medical education: Forward and backward reasoning in a digital family medicine assessment by Johanna Klutmann, Constanze Dietzsch, Ute Schlasius-Ratter, Alexander Oksche, Sara Volz-Willems, Sandra Jordan, Johannes Jäger, Fabian Dupont (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13316782.txt.
Description
Johanna Klutmann and co-authors found a 2026 way to watch medical students think during a digital family medicine exam, capturing whether they reason forward from data or backward from answer choices. Seeing the process, not just the score, could sharpen teaching.
Fifth-year students in two exam rounds recorded their reasoning on extra research questions, giving 210 students in the large cohort. Forward reasoning appeared far more often than backward, and top scorers used both styles more than weak scorers. Feedback during learning did not shift the style choice, though follow-up questions might. The method offers schools a quality check on their questions and a window into skills that marks alone hide.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Johanna Klutmann, Constanze Dietzsch, Ute Schlasius-Ratter, Alexander Oksche, Sara Volz-Willems, Sandra Jordan, Johannes Jäger, Fabian Dupont |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 24207 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |