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Instrumental judgment and performance under variations in action-outcome contingency and contiguity
1MRC Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge, England.
Memory & Cognition
|July 1, 1991
Summary
This study supports the intentional theory of instrumental performance, suggesting actions are driven by beliefs in their causal effectiveness. Findings challenge previous notions of implicit learning by showing performance aligns with perceived action-outcome control.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Behavioral Neuroscience
Background:
- The intentional theory posits that action performance relies on beliefs about an action's causal power.
- Prior implicit learning studies suggested a dissociation between performance and conscious beliefs.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the relationship between causal beliefs and instrumental action performance.
- To test the intentional theory of performance against implicit learning models.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments involved participants performing a key-press action associated with a computer-screen outcome under varying contingencies and action-outcome delays.
- Participants either judged the action's effectiveness or aimed to maximize their score.
Main Results:
- Performance and causal judgments were similarly sensitive to changes in the action-outcome contingency.
- Increasing the delay between action and outcome led to a decline in both performance and causal judgments.
Conclusions:
- Results align with the intentional theory of instrumental performance.
- Findings pose challenges for theories of implicit learning that propose performance independent of conscious beliefs.