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Updated: Jul 3, 2026

Task Interruption and Resumption Paradigm for Testing the Activation and Pursuit of an Abstract Thinking Goal

Task Interruption and Resumption Paradigm for Testing the Activation and Pursuit of an Abstract Thinking Goal

Published on: April 18, 2017

Causal diversity effects in information seeking.

Nancy S Kim¹, Jennelle E Yopchick, Leontien de Kwaadsteniet

¹Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. n.kim@neu.edu

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

|July 9, 2008

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

People seeking to understand causes prefer testing diverse evidence, even if unlikely. This strategy aims to strongly support or disconfirm a hypothesis, rather than just confirm it.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Decision Making
Causal Reasoning

Background:

Individuals often seek information to test hypotheses about cause-and-effect relationships.
Understanding how people search for evidence is crucial for cognitive science.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how knowledge of causal structure influences information-seeking behavior.
To determine if people prefer testing evidence close together or far apart in a causal network.

Main Methods:

Two studies were conducted using a learned disease category with a defined causal structure.
Participants were asked to choose evidence to test a candidate hypothesis within this structure.

Main Results:

Participants consistently selected evidence distantly located within the causal structure.
This diverse evidence was rated as having a comparatively low probability of occurrence.

Conclusions:

People do not solely seek confirming evidence; they favor evidence that, if present, would strongly support a hypothesis but is also unlikely.
This suggests a strategy balancing hypothesis support with potential disconfirmation in information seeking.