Intervening to learn about effects of one’s actions

Abstract

-Intervention provides a reliable cue to veridical causality. Just as an experimenter manipulates variables to distinguish cause and effect from mere correlation, so might a rat learn differently about the effects of its own actions. However, theory remains vague on specific predictions. The present study asks whether and how producing a conditional stimulus by lever contact alters what a rat learns about that stimulus. Despite the theoretical pressure among theories of causal reasoning for an effect of intervention to hold, the effect we found was not in standard goal-oriented response variables, but in a general activity measure, and so not readily interpretable by typical theories of causal reasoning. We propose a viable explanation for this pattern in terms of multiple foraging strategies. The primary contribution of the present results is that they pose three challenges to theories that concern how animals deal with cause and effect: 1) to resolve present ambiguities regarding predictions; 2) to situate causal cognition research in specific ecological contexts, such as predation; and 3) to look beyond goal acquisition, to the rest of the animal's behavior, including general activity. We present one potential solution in alignment with behavior systems approaches. Keywords -Intervention, Causal reasoning, Graphical models, Behavior systems, General activity, Rattus norvegicusExperimenters manipulate variables to discern cause and effect from mere correlation. They understand that producing a potential cause by one's own action to observe its effects (intervention) is crucial to their ability to attribute causation, and how observing covariation in this context provides much stronger evidence of causation than observing the same pattern occurring without control over relevant variables. However, it is not only experimenters who experiment. Cooks experiment with recipes; electricians experiment with circuits; and the rest of us experiment with recipes, circuits, plumbing, automotive repair, and whenever we attempt to decipher hidden causal factors. When we do, we are not always very principled scientists about it (even the principled scientists), but whatever experimental control we may overlook while adjusting the amount of sugar in a cake, reliably, when we test causal factors, here or in any domain, we intervene on variables.Likewise, rats are not merely passive observers, but engage in reliable patterns of appetitive behavior in which they interact with objects in their environments in system-specific ways. A feedingready rat will root, gnaw, and manipulate protrusions, thereby producing effects that may provide meaningful cues to causality. Such information is often available to be exploited by an active learner. Do they use this information appropriately? Are rats naïve experimenters? To be clear, the question is not whether rats are doing what a trained experimenter does. Rather, one can imagine a rat testing hypotheses with no more foresight than shown by human naïve experimenters. For instanc...

Causal reasoning in rats' behaviour systems

“…[ 6 ] demonstrated, and we replicated, subjects spent more of their time working the lever on presentations that were self-produced. We furthermore found that movement around the chamber, another response measure that appears among rats in the context of feeding, was also high on such presentations (see also [ 9 ]). That certain responses were heightened on self-produced presentations, rather than reduced, clashes with any interpretation based solely on reduction of expectation.…”

“…Instead, both lever contact and general locomotion are at least as great in these conditions. In a related study more directly concerned with intervention [ 9 ], greater general locomotion was shown among subjects for whom a conditional stimulus was self-produced by lever contact, relative to a RI condition.…”

“…Having an analysis of the experimental situation in terms of motivational systems is meaningful on its own, but this gains additional significance in integration with a complementary analysis in terms of cognitive processes or rationality. A fuller description of the behaviour of rats in these circumstances reveals striking behavioural patterns not foreseen by theories of causal reasoning (see also [ 9 ]). If the experiment meaningfully captures causal reasoning, these variables may have bearing on how rats deal with cause and effect in analogous circumstances.…”

“…Such distinctions affect neither Blaisdell et al's [1] analysis nor the present analysis. The status of intervention among rats is a separable, remaining question, not to draw assumptions about lightly [9].…”