Table 4. Comparisons of communicative functions used by physicians with internal and external LOC in the simulated interview and the clinical interview (upper and lower quartiles of the Rotter I-E scale scores distribution) (Parametric Student's t-test).

	Simulated interview						Clinical interview
	Internal LOC		External LOC				Internal LOC		External LOC
	M	s.d.	M	s.d.	t	P	M	s.d.	M	s.d.	t	P
Introducing–closing	2.5	1.7	2.5	1.4	−0.037	0.971	2.4	1.8	3.6	3.3	−1.346	0.191
Assessing, checking, summarising	32.0	12.9	31.5	10.2	0.128	0.899	19.6	12.2	25.5	10.3	−1.571	0.125
Acknowledging	21.6	9.2	22.1	9.4	−0.167	0.868	25.5	14.0	24.9	8.2	0.153	0.879
Appropriate information	5.9	4.4	9.8	4.9	−2.658	0.011	27.5	13.9	26.7	10.2	0.192	0.849
Premature information	24.6	10.1	22.1	9.3	0.805	0.426	12.7	8.8	6.4	5.4	2.550	0.015
Reassuring, empathy	1.2	1.4	1.8	2.8	−0.931	0.357	0.3	0.5	0.5	1.3	−0.840	0.407
Premature reassurance	4.0	3.6	2.8	1.5	1.439	0.161	0.6	0.7	0.2	0.6	1.773	0.085
Educated guesses, confronting, alerting to reality	2.1	2.6	1.7	1.9	0.525	0.603	0.0	0.2	0.2	0.3	−1.416	0.169
Negotiating	1.3	1.6	1.4	2.6	−0.189	0.851	1.0	1.0	0.9	1.2	0.162	0.872
Unrated function	4.8	4.4	4.2	3.9	0.435	0.666	10.5	8.6	11.1	8.5	−0.209	0.836