David R. Shanks

Judgement of act-outcome contingency: The role of selective attribution

In the first experiment subjects were presented with a number of sets of trials on each of which they could perform a particular action and observe the occurrence of an outcome in the context of a video game. The contingency between the action and outcome was varied across the different sets of trials. When required to judge the effectiveness of the action in controlling the outcome during a set of trials, subjects assigned positive ratings for a positive contingency and negative ratings for a negative contingency. Furthermore, the magnitude of the ratings was related systematically to the strength of the actual contingency. With a fixed probability of an outcome given the action, judgements of positive contingencies decreased as the likelihood that the outcome would occur without the action was raised. Correspondingly, the absolute value of ratings of negative contingencies was increased both by an increment in the probability of the outcome in the absence of the action and by a decrement in the probability of the outcome following the action. A systematic bias was observed, however, in that positive judgements were given under a non-contingent relationship when the outcome frequency was relatively high. However, this bias could be reduced by giving extended exposure to the non-contingent schedule (Experiment 2). This pattern of contingency judgements can be explained if it is assumed that a process of selective attribution operates, whereby people are less likely to attribute an outcome to some potential target cause if another effective cause is present. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated the operation of this process by showing that initially establishing another agent as an effective cause of the outcome subsequently reduced or blocked the extent to which the subjects attributed the outcome to the action. Finally, we argue that the pattern and bias in contingency judgements based upon interactions with a causal process can be explained in terms of contemporary conditioning models of associative learning.

Forward and backward blocking in human contingency judgement

Three experiments investigated whether a process akin to Kamins (1969) blocking effect would occur with human contingency judgements in the context of a video game. Subjects were presented with sets of trials on each of which they could perform a particular action and observe whether the action produced a particular outcome in a situation in which there was an alternative potential cause of the outcome. In Experiment 1 it was found that prior observation of the relationship between the alternative cause and the outcome did indeed block or reduce learning about the subsequent action-outcome relationship. However, exposure to the relationship between the alternative cause and the outcome after observing the association between the action and the outcome also reduced judgements of the action–outcome contingency (backward blocking), a finding at variance with conditioning theory. In Experiment 2 it was found that, just as is the case with forward blocking, the degree of backward blocking depended on how good a predictor of the outcome the alternative cause was. Finally, in Experiment 3 it was shown that the backward blocking effect was not the result of greater forgetting about the action–outcome relationship in the experimental than in the control condition. These results cast doubt upon the applicability of contemporary theories of conditioning to human contingency judgement.

Associative Accounts of Causality Judgment

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the associative accounts of causality judgment. The perceptual and cognitive approaches to causal attribution can be contrasted with a more venerable tradition of associationism. The only area of psychology that offered an associative account of a process sensitive to causality is that of conditioning. An instrumental or operant conditioning procedure presents a subject with a causal relationship between an action and an outcome, the reinforcer; performing the action either causes the reinforcer to occur under a positive contingency or prevents its occurrence under a negative one, and the subjects demonstrate sensitivity to these causal relationships by adjusting their behavior appropriately. Most of these associative theories are developed to explain classic or Pavlovian conditioning rather than the instrumental or operant variety, but there are good reasons for assuming that the two types of conditioning are mediated by a common learning process.

Is Human Learning Rational

We can predict and control events in the world via associative learning. Such learning is rational if we come to believe that an associative relationship exists between a pair of events only when it truly does. The statistical metric δP, the difference between the probability of an outcome event in the presence of the predictor and its probability in the absence of the predictor tells us when and to what extent events are indeed related. Contrary to what is often claimed, humans’ associative judgements compare very favourably with the δP metric, even in situations where multiple predictive cues are in competition for association with the outcome. How do humans achieve this judgemental accuracy? I argue that it is not via the application of an explicit mental version of the δP rule. Instead, accurate judgements are an emergent property of an associationist learning process of the sort that has become common in adaptive network models of cognition. Such an associationist mechanism is the “means” to a normative or statistical “end”.

Continuous monitoring of human contingency judgment across trials

Recent evidence suggests that people are sensitive to the degree of contingency between their actions and ensuing outcomes, but little is known about the way in which such contingency judgments develop as more and more information about the contingency is provided. Three experiments examined this issue in the context of a video game. In Experiment 1, it was found that contingency judgments follow growth functions: When the contingency was positive, judgments increased toward a positive asymptote, and when the contingency was negative, judgments decreased toward a negative asymptote. When the contingency was zero, judgments themselves remained close to zero but were biased by the overall frequency with which the outcome occurred. In Experiment 2, it was shown that the growth function was not the result of the anchoring of early judgments at the zero point. The bias in judgments when the contingency is zero was investigated in Experiment 3. The results are discussed in terms of rule-based analyses and contemporary theories of conditioning.

Selectional processes in causality judgment

Two experiments illustrate the way in which competition between potential causes occurs when subjects are asked to judge the extent to which an action is the cause of an outcome. In the first experiment, it was found that introducing occurrences of the outcome in the absence of the action reduced causality judgments, but this effect was attenuated if these outcomes were signaled by another stimulus. In the second experiment, a delay between the action and the outcome reduced judgments, but this could be abolished by inserting a stimulus between the action and the outcome. The results are discussed in terms of a view of causality judgment that assumes that such judgments are based on associations between the mental representations of the action and the outcome.

Selective attribution and the judgment of causality

Abstract Four experiments used a video game procedure to investigate the mechanism by which people are sensitive to the degree of contingency between two events. Subjects were presented with sets of trials on each of which they could perform a particular action and observe whether the action produced a particular outcome in a situation in which there was an alternative potential cause of the outcome. The experiments attempted to show that the process of selective attribution operates during exposure to a particular contingency and mediates the contingency judgment. In Experiment 1 the impact of outcomes occurring in the absence of the action was reduced by changing the location at which outcomes occurred following the action. Experiment 2 replicated this effect and showed that it was not due to simple changes in temporal contiguity, but rather was due to affecting the process of selective attribution. In Experiment 3 judgments were shown to increase when outcomes occurring in the absence of the action, outcomes which otherwise would reduce judgments of action-outcome contingency, were signaled. Finally, in Experiment 4 this effect was replicated, and in addition it was shown that the signaling effect is not simply due to the presence of the signal. For the effect to be shown, the signal must occur when the outcome occurs in the absence of the action.

Hume on the Perception of Causality

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Effects of distractor familiarity on habituation of neophobia

When the first presentation of a neophobic flavor is immediately followed by a distractor flavor, habituation of the neophobic response is typically attenuated. This is manifested by the fact that neophobia is still shown to the target flavor on its second presentation. Three experiments investigated the prediction that this effect will occur only for novel, but not familiar, distractor solutions. Experiments 1 and 2 found that, contrary to this prediction, both novel and familiar distractors can attenuate the habituation of a neophobic response. In Experiment 3, however, when the distractor was made very much more familiar, it lost its ability to interfere with the habituation of neophobia to the target solution. These results are discussed in terms of Wagner’s (1981) theory of habituation.