Cue interaction in human contingency judgment

Most studies of human contingency judgment have been based on the assumption that frequency information about one predictor is assessed in isolation of information about other predictors. Recent evidence, however, suggests that the judged predictive strength of one cue is influenced by the predictive strengths of other copresent cues. Two experiments demonstrate that stimuli with the same outcome contingencies may nonetheless have different predictive strengths as the result of cue interaction. The first experiment, in which a within-subject design was used, provides a demonstration of blocking. A stimulus presented in compound with a strong predictor was rated as less predictive than another stimulus that was presented in compound with a nonpredictive cue. In the second experiment, cue interactions in conditioned inhibition were examined. A stimulus gained negative predictive strength as the result of compound presentations with a positive predictor when the outcome was not presented. This negative predictor was compared with an otherwise analogous stimulus that was not presented in compound with a positive predictor. These results support the use of animal-conditioning models as accounts of human contingency learning.