Reading focus
Syllabus: How Do We Build and Test Psychological Theories?
Compare the causal interpretations of the tasks with the symmetrical cue-competition prediction under examination.
Why you’re reading it. Evaluate an experiment designed to make competing accounts disagree.
A question to consider. Which assumption must change for the original learning rule to accommodate different judgments when cues are described as causes rather than effects?
Why this reading
The same sequence of observations can be understood as causes predicting an effect or as effects indicating a cause. These experiments ask whether that interpretation changes cue competition, challenging accounts that ignore what the cues mean to the learner.
Before you read
Predictive reasoning moves from a proposed cause to its effects; diagnostic reasoning moves from effects to a possible cause. Neither direction of reasoning changes the assumed direction of causation. A causal model represents that structure; an observed correlation alone does not establish it.
Read for
- Identify how instructions establish the causal roles of cues, while distinguishing those roles from their order of presentation.
- Compare the blocking and later cue-rating patterns across predictive and diagnostic conditions.
- Ask which assumptions of the associative models under comparison generate symmetrical predictions and how a causal-model account differs.
Consider afterwards
- Two indicator lights could be competing causes of a machine failure or separate consequences of one failure. How might learning about the first light change judgments about the second in each case?
Editorial context
The three experiments support the importance of causal interpretation in the tasks examined. They do not establish that all associative models ignore meaning or that people invariably infer the correct causal structure. A result that challenges a specified model is narrower than a verdict on every possible associative explanation.