The present study examined whether a spatial secondary task could distinguish among different levels oflaparoscopic skill. Novices and surgeons with different levels of laparoscopic experience were asked toperform a peg transfer task on a laparoscopic simulator along with the secondary task. The results showedthat novices performed more poorly than the surgeons on both the primary peg task and the secondarytask. This pattern of results suggests that the primary task was more difficult for the novices leaving fewerattentional resources for the secondary task. Moreover, the results show that the spatial secondary taskused in this study is sensitive to differences in mental resources required by individuals with differentlevels of laparoscopic surgical skill.
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