To the Editor: I read Custers' criticism on dual processing theory (DPT) with interest. Yet, his conclusion that "a description of clinical problem solving as the result of two interacting systems [... ] gives few clues to [... ] what the best approach to teaching clinical problem solving will be'' is disputable and seems to rest on an oversimplification of DPT. In fact, real-life tasks such as medical diagnosis can never be classified as System 1 or System 2 because they contain both consistent aspects (System 1) and variable aspects (System 2). The great advantage of DPT is not that it creates a dichotomous classification for cognitive tasks but, rather, that it acknowledges that System 1 and System 2 processes occur and can be developed in parallel; expertise development is thus more than a sole transition from System 2 to System 1 processing on a cognitive continuum.
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