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Related Experiment Video

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Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Investigating Causal Brain-behavioral Relationships and their Time Course

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Published on: July 18, 2014

Testing the deductive inferential account of blocking in causal learning.

Evan J Livesey¹, Justine K Greenaway², Samantha Schubert²

¹School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia. evan.livesey@sydney.edu.au.

Memory & Cognition

|March 27, 2019

Summary

Human causal learning blocking effects are not solely driven by deductive reasoning. Pretraining assumptions about outcome additivity influence judgments but do not eliminate the core blocking phenomenon.

Keywords:

Associative learning Blocking Causal learning Deductive reasoning Outcome additivity

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Human Learning
Causal Inference

Background:

The blocking effect in causal learning is sensitive to assumptions about outcome additivity.
This sensitivity has led to theories suggesting deductive inference underlies this phenomenon.
Understanding the role of deductive reasoning is key to understanding human causal learning.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the impact of pretraining outcome additivity assumptions on the blocking effect.
To determine if manipulating additivity assumptions influences deductive reasoning in causal learning.
To assess the reliance of the blocking effect on deductive inference.

Main Methods:

Two experiments manipulated participants' assumptions about outcome additivity using pretraining.
Participants underwent a standard blocking procedure after pretraining.
Causal judgments, confidence, and outcome severity ratings were collected.

Main Results:

Additive pretraining led to lower causal ratings and higher confidence for blocked cues, supporting deductive reasoning.
Nonadditive pretraining did not impact the reliable blocking effect observed without pretraining.
No evidence linked the blocking effect to additivity assumptions in the absence of pretraining.

Conclusions:

While additive pretraining may facilitate blocking via deductive reasoning, the blocking effect itself is not dependent on it.
Humans do not automatically engage in deduction simply because the assumptions for it are present.
The blocking effect in causal learning is robust and not solely reliant on deductive inference.