García-Retamero Rocío, Galesic Mirta, Gigerenzer Gerd
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain.
Psicothema. 2011 Nov;23(4):599-605.
Many patients have severe difficulties grasping several numerical concepts that are related to their health, such as, for instance, the risk of suffering various diseases. Visual aids have been proposed as a promising method for enhancing risk communication and comprehension. In medical practice, however, not all patients benefit from visual aids. In a study conducted on a probabilistic, representative national sample in the United States, we identified a group of patients for whom visual aids are most useful: Those who have low numeracy but high graphical literacy skills. These patients have high scores in three abilities involved in graph comprehension: (1) the ability to read the data, (2) the ability to read the relations between the data, and (3) the ability to read beyond the data. Our results can have important implications for medical practice and for risk communication about health.
许多患者在理解与自身健康相关的几个数字概念时存在严重困难，例如患各种疾病的风险。视觉辅助工具已被提议作为一种增强风险沟通与理解的有效方法。然而，在医疗实践中，并非所有患者都能从视觉辅助工具中受益。在美国进行的一项基于概率抽样的全国代表性样本研究中，我们确定了一组视觉辅助工具最有用的患者：那些算术能力低但图形理解能力高的患者。这些患者在涉及图形理解的三种能力方面得分较高：（1）读取数据的能力，（2）读取数据之间关系的能力，以及（3）超越数据进行解读的能力。我们的研究结果对医疗实践以及健康风险沟通具有重要意义。
