Testing the deductive inferential account of blocking in causal learning.

The sensitivity of the blocking effect to outcome additivity pretraining has been used to argue that the phenomenon is the result of deductive inference, and to draw general conclusions about the nature of human causal learning. In two experiments, we manipulated participants' assumptions about the...

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Publicado en:Memory & Cognition Vol. 47; no. 6; pp. 1120 - 1133
Autores principales: Livesey, Evan J., Greenaway, Justine K., Schubert, Samantha, Thorwart, Anna
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Aug2019
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: Testing the deductive inferential account of blocking in causal learning.
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        au:
          Livesey, Evan J.
          Greenaway, Justine K.
          Schubert, Samantha
          Thorwart, Anna
        affil:
          School of Psychology, University of Sydney, 2006, Sydney, NSW, Australia
          Department of Psychology, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Marburg, Germany
      su:
        Attribution (Social psychology)
        Confidence
        Judgment (Psychology)
        Task performance
        Learning strategies
        Prompts (Psychology)
      sug:
        subj:
          Attribution (Social psychology)
          Confidence
          Judgment (Psychology)
          Task performance
          Learning strategies
          Prompts (Psychology)
      keyword:
        Associative learning
        Blocking
        Causal learning
        Deductive reasoning
        Outcome additivity
        Associative learning
        Blocking
        Causal learning
        Deductive reasoning
        Outcome additivity
      ab: The sensitivity of the blocking effect to outcome additivity pretraining has been used to argue that the phenomenon is the result of deductive inference, and to draw general conclusions about the nature of human causal learning. In two experiments, we manipulated participants' assumptions about the additivity of the outcome using pretraining before a typical blocking procedure. Ratings measuring causal judgments, confidence, and expected severity of the outcome were used concurrently to investigate how pretraining affected assumptions of outcome additivity and blocking. In Experiment 1, additive pretraining led to lower causal ratings and higher confidence ratings of the blocked cue, relative to control cues, consistent with the notion that additive pretraining encourages deductive reasoning. However, Experiments 1 and 2 showed that removing additivity assumptions through nonadditive pretraining had no impact on a statistically reliable blocking effect observed in a blocking procedure with no pretraining. We found no evidence that the blocking effect in the absence of pretraining was related to the participants' assumptions about the additivity of the outcome. Although additive pretraining may enhance blocking by encouraging deductive reasoning about the blocked cue, the evidence suggests that blocking in causal learning is not reliant on this reasoning and that humans do not readily engage in deduction merely because they possess the assumptions that permit its use.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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