Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This study focuses on the infuence of a three-dimensional (3D)graphic image and a 3D-printed object on the spatial reasoningof experts and novices in the medical field. The spatial rea-soning task of this study required doctors specializing in di-gestive surgery to infer cross sections of a liver with a 3D im-age and a 3D-printed object in a situation where liver resectionsurgery was simulated. The task performance was comparedwith that of university students who conducted the same task inMaehigashi et al. (2016). The results of the analysis indicatedthat the doctors showed the same task performance when usingthe 3D image and the 3D-printed object. However, the univer-sity students learned faster and inferred the inside of a liverstructure more accurately with the 3D-printed object than withthe 3D image, and they performed equally to the professionaldoctors. Our results are then discussed in relation to previousstudies.