Causal order does not affect cue selection in human associative learning

Abstract

Waldmann and Holyoak (1992) presented evidence in support of the claim that cue selection does not emerge in "diagnostic" human learning tasks in which the cues are interpretable as effects and the outcomes as the causes of those effects. Waldmann and Holyoak argued that this evidence presents a major difficulty for associationist theories oflearning and instead supports a "causal model" theory. We identify a number of flaws in Waldmann and Holyoak's experimental procedures and report three new experiments designed to test their claim. In Experiment 1, cue selection was observed regardless of causal order and regardless of whether the cues were abstractly or concretely specified. In Experiments 2 and 3, cue selection was again observed when subjects predicted causes from effects. Weconclude that our results are consistent with simple associationist theories of learning but contradict Waldmann and Holyoak's causal model theory.511

Mechanisms of predictive and diagnostic causal induction.

“…In Experiments 1a and 1b, we improved on Shanks and López's (1996) methodology so that all these conditions were simultaneously met. First, this involved using a causal scenario that presented no ambiguity regarding the causal role assigned to cues and outcomes.…”

“…Despite their somewhat inconclusive results, however, this research has yielded a set of agreed conditions concerning how this evaluation should be made, and the present experimental series fulfils all of them (see Shanks &López, 1996, andHolyoak, 1997, for discussion of these conditions). We will briefly consider some of these previous studies in the General Discussion in light of the findings obtained here.…”

“…According to one explanation, the processes involved are of an associative nature and are directly related to conditioning mechanisms in animals (Shanks & López, 1996). Thus, inferential learning is grounded on the acquisition of knowledge that captures the statistical or covariational structure of the environment.…”

“…Let us take the design of Shanks and López's (1996) Experiment 3 as an illustration of a cue competition effect. Let us further suppose that participants are allergists trying to predict the type of allergic reaction (outcome) a series of patients will develop after having eaten particular foods (cues).…”

Competition Between Antecedent and Between Subsequent Stimuli in Causal Judgments.

“…However, this last observation has been challenged by repeated demonstrations of competition between effects (e.g., Cobos et al, 2002;Matute et al, 1996;Price & Yates, 1993;Shanks, 1991;Shanks & López, 1996) and by the failed demonstrations of competition between causes with diagnostic training (i.e., when the effect is presented first; e.g., Cobos et al, 2002;Price & Yates, 1995). Note that the causal model theory predicts competition between causes even when they are presented as subsequent events because, for this account, the causal structure is the relevant factor, and the temporal order of the stimuli is irrelevant.…”