Binaural release from temporal induction

This study examined the effects of interaural phase difference (IPhD) relations in temporal induction (TI)—that is, the perceived continuity of a fainter sound (inducee) through an interrupting higher amplitude sound (inducer). The extent of TI was measured both directly as the upper amplitude level for continuity and indirectly as the loudness reduction of the inducer. It was found that TI was inhibited when the IPhD of the inducer and the IPhD of the inducee differed. It was also found that the extent of induction was positively related to the masking potential of the inducer as measured by the binaural masking level difference procedure. These results suggest that TI involves processes that are affected by interaural phase differences and that the masking potential rule, shown by previous studies to apply in the frequency domain, applies also in the IPhD domain. The present findings are consistent with the hypothesis that TI results from allocation of a portion of the neural excitation produced by the inducer over to the inducee if the inducer has the appropriate masking potential. As a consequence, obliterated signals can be selectively restored on the basis of both frequency-specific monaural cues and azimuth-related binaural cues, abilities that can enhance detection of signals under the noisy conditions of everyday life.     

The influence of naive causal theories on lay concepts of mental illness

Two experiments, incorporating both real-life (Experiment 1) and artificial (Experiment 2) stimuli, demonstrated that lay concepts of mental disorders can be reliably predicted from subjects' naive causal theories about those disorders. Symptoms that are deeper causes (X, where X causes Y, which causes Z) are more important in lay concepts than intermediate causes (Y), which in turn are more important than terminal effects (Z). In addition, symptoms that cause or are caused by other symptoms are more important in lay concepts than symptoms not participating in any causal relationships. Implications of these results for current models of categorization and for research on lay theories of mental disorders are discussed, and future directions for research are suggested.     

The influence of cognitive ability and instructional set on causal conditional inference

We report a large study in which participants are invited to draw inferences from causal conditional sentences with varying degrees of believability. General intelligence was measured, and participants were split into groups of high and low ability. Under strict deductive-reasoning instructions, it was observed that higher ability participants were significantly less influenced by prior belief than were those of lower ability. This effect disappeared, however, when pragmatic reasoning instructions were employed in a separate group. These findings are in accord with dual-process theories of reasoning. We also took detailed measures of beliefs in the conditional sentences used for the reasoning tasks. Statistical modelling showed that it is not belief in the conditional statement per se that is the causal factor, but rather correlates of it. Two different models of belief-based reasoning were found to fit the data according to the kind of instructions and the type of inference under consideration.     

Mechanisms of predictive and diagnostic causal induction

In predictive causal inference, people reason from causes to effects, whereas in diagnostic inference, they reason from effects to causes. Independently of the causal structure of the events, the temporal structure of the information provided to a reasoner may vary (e.g., multiple events followed by a single event vs. a single event followed by multiple events). The authors report 5 experiments in which causal structure and temporal information were varied independently. Inferences were influenced by temporal structure but not by causal structure. The results are relevant to the evaluation of 2 current accounts of causal induction, the Rescorla-Wagner (R. A. Rescorla & A. R. Wagner, 1972) and causal model theories (M. R. Waldmann & K. J. Holyoak, 1992).     

The influence of temporal distance on justice and care morality

Agerström, J., Björklund, F. & Allwood, C. M. (2010). The influence of temporal distance on justice and care morality. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 46–55.
The primary goal of this study was to examine whether changes in the temporal distance of a moral dilemma affect how it is perceived and subsequently resolved. Based on Construal Level Theory ( Trope & Liberman, 2003 ), it was predicted that the relative weight of abstract justice features should increase and the relative weight of concrete care features should decrease with temporal distance. The results showed that females became increasingly justice-oriented with greater temporal distance. However, this was not the case for males who were unaffected by temporal distance. This interaction was conceptually replicated in a follow-up experiment in which abstraction was manipulated directly by a mindset manipulation. The present results suggest that temporal distance is a contextual factor that can alter the extent to which moral judgments and reasoning are based on justice and care, although this effect seems to be moderated by gender.     

Trumping the causal influence account of causation

Here is a simple counterexample to David Lewis’s causal influence account of causation, one that is especially illuminating due to its connection to what Lewis himself writes: it is a variant of his trumping example

The texture of causal construals: Domain-specific biases shape causal inferences from discourse

We conducted five sets of experiments asking whether psychological and physical events are construed in broadly different manners concerning the underlying textures of their causes. In Experiments 1a–1d, we found a robust tendency to estimate fewer causes (but not effects) for psychological than for physical events; Experiment 2 showed a similar pattern of results when participants were asked to generate hypothetical causes and effects; Experiment 3 revealed a greater tendency to ascribe linear chains of causes (but not effects) to physical events; Experiment 4 showed that the expectation of linear chains was related to intuitions about deterministic processes; and Experiment 5 showed that simply framing a given ambiguous event in psychological versus physical terms is sufficient to induce changes in the patterns of causal inferences. Adults therefore consistently show a tendency to think about psychological and physical events as being embedded in different kinds of causal structures.     

The influence of synchronous audiovisual distractors on audiovisual temporal order judgments

Participants made unspeeded temporal order judgments (TOJs) regarding which occurred first, anauditory or a visual target stimulus, when they were presented at a variety of different stimulus onset asynchronies. The target stimuli were presented either in isolation or positioned randomly among a stream of three synchronous audiovisual distractors. The largest just noticeable differences were reported when the targets were presented in the middle of the distractor stream. When the targets were presented at the beginning of the stream, performance was no worse than when the audiovisual targets were presented in isolation. Subsequent experiments revealed that performance improved somewhat when the position of the target was fixed or when the target was made physically distinctive from the distractors. These results show that audiovisual TOJs are impaired by the presence of audiovisual distractors and that this cost can be ameliorated by directing attention to the appropriate temporal position within the stimulus stream.     

The influence of communality andN on the sampling distributions of factor loadings

The effects ofN and communality on the variability of zero and nonzero factor loadings were assessed using a Monte Carlo approach. It was found that increasingN or communality resulted in decreased sampling error of individual factor loadings, but for zero loadingsN was found to have the greatest influence. It was also found that distributions of factor loadings become relatively elongated as communality increases.     

The temporal stability and predictive validity of pupils' causal attributions for difficult classroom behaviour

Background. Recent studies have investigated the causal attributions for difficult pupil behaviour made by teachers, pupils, and parents but none have investigated the temporal stability or predictive validity of these attributions. Aims. This study examines the causal attributions made for difficult classroom behaviour by students on two occasions 30 months apart. The longitudinal stability of these attributions is considered as is the predictive validity of the first set of attributions in relation to teachers' later judgments about individual students' behaviour. Sample. Two hundred and seventeen secondary school age pupils (114 males, 103 females) provided data on the two occasions. Teachers also rated each student's behaviour at the two times. Method. A questionnaire listing 63 possible causes of classroom misbehaviour was delivered to pupils firstly when they were in Year 7 (aged 11–12) and then again, 30 months later. Responses were analysed through exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Additionally, teachers were asked to rate the standard of behaviour of each of the students on the two occasions. Results. EFA of the Years 7 and 10 data indicated that pupils' attributions yielded broadly similar five‐factor models with the perceived relative importance of these factors remaining the same. Analysis also revealed a predictive relationship between pupils' attributions regarding the factor named culture of misbehaviour in Year 7, and teachers' judgments of their standard of behaviour in Year 10. Conclusion. The present study suggests that young adolescents' causal attributions for difficult classroom behaviour remain stable over time and are predictive of teachers' later judgments about their behaviour.     

On the influence of causal beliefs on the feeling of agency

The sense of agency is the experience of being the origin of a sensory consequence. This study investigates whether contextual beliefs modulate low-level sensorimotor processes which contribute to the emergence of the sense of agency. We looked at the influence of causal beliefs on ‘intentional binding’, a phenomenon which accompanies self-agency. Participants judged the onset-time of either an action or a sound which followed the action. They were induced to believe that the tone was either triggered by themselves or by somebody else, although, in reality, the sound was always triggered by the participants. We found that intentional binding was stronger when participants believed that they triggered the tone, compared to when they believed that another person triggered the tone. These results suggest that high-level contextual information influences sensorimotor processes responsible for generating intentional binding.     

The influence of temporal regularities on the implicit learning of pitch structures

Implicit learning is the acquisition of complex information without the intention to learn. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of temporal regularities on the implicit learning of an artificial pitch grammar. According to the dynamic attending theory (DAT) external regularities can entrain internal oscillators that guide attention over time, inducing temporal expectations that influence perception of future events. In the present study, the presentation of the artificial pitch grammar in the exposure phase was temporally either regular or irregular for one of two participant groups. Based on the DAT, it was hypothesized that the regular temporal presentation would favour implicit learning of tone structures in comparison to the irregular temporal presentation. Results demonstrated learning of the artificial grammar for the group with the regular exposure phase and partial learning for the group with the irregular exposure phase. These findings suggest that the regular presentation helps listeners to develop perceptual expectations about the temporal occurrence of future tones and thus facilitates the learning of the artificial pitch grammar.     

The influence of temporal and spatial variation on tactile identification of letters

This study was designed to show that variation in stimulation has an influence on tactile perception similar to that in the visual modality. Thirty-two subjects were required to identify Hebrew letters by the tactile sense. Identification time was found to be significantly (p less than .01) shorter when subjects could feel the letters both with temporal variation (i.e., vibrations) and spatial variation (i.e., allowing the subjects to move their fingers over the letters) than when the letters were stable. The longest identification time was found when both temporal and spatial variation were absent. The effects of the two types of tactile variation were found to be compensatory, and a possible explanation for that is offered. Possible implications of these results regarding the use of tactile perception in man-machine systems are discussed.     

The role of learning data in causal reasoning about observations and interventions

Recent studies have shown that people have the capacity to derive interventional predictions for previously unseen actions from observational knowledge, a finding that challenges associative theories of causal learning and reasoning (e.g., Meder, Hagmayer, & Waldmann, 2008). Although some researchers have claimed that such inferences are based mainly on qualitative reasoning about the structure of a causal system (e.g., Sloman, 2005), we propose that people use both the causal structure and its parameters for their inferences. We here employ an observational trial-by-trial learning paradigm to test this prediction. In Experiment 1, the causal strength of the links within a given causal model was varied, whereas in Experiment 2, base rate information was manipulated while keeping the structure of the model constant. The results show that learners’ causal judgments were strongly affected by the observed learning data despite being presented with identical hypotheses about causal structure. The findings show furthermore that participants correctly distinguished between observations and hypothetical interventions. However, they did not adequately differentiate between hypothetical and counterfactual interventions.     

Associative and causal reasoning accounts of causal induction: Symmetries and asymmetries in predictive and diagnostic inferences

Associative and causal reasoning accounts are probably the two most influential types of accounts of causal reasoning processes. Only causal reasoning accounts predict certain asymmetries between predictive (i.e., reasoning from causes to effects) and diagnostic (i.e., reasoning from effects to causes) inferences regarding cue-interaction phenomena (e.g., the overshadowing effect). In the experiments reported here, we attempted to delimit the conditions under which these asymmetries occur. The results show that unless participants perceived the relevance of causal information to solving the task, predictive and diagnostic inferences were symmetrical. Specifically, Experiments 1A and 1B showed that implicitly stressing the relevance of causal information by having participants review the instructions favored the presence of asymmetries between predictive and diagnostic situations. In addition, Experiment 2 showed that explicitly stressing the relevance of causal information by stating the importance of the causal role of events after the instructions were given also favored the asymmetry.