Short article Inferring causality assessments from predictive responses: Cue interaction without cue competition

The authors criticize the use of participants' predictive responses during a learning phase as a measure of causal assessments (J. M. Tangen & L. G. Allan, 2003 Tangen, JM and Allan, LG. 2003. The relative effect of cue interaction. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 56B: 279–300. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar], 2004 Tangen, JM and Allan, LG. 2004. Cue interaction and judgments of causality: Contributions of causal and associative processes. Memory & Cognition, 32: 107–124. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Simulations demonstrate that a general aim to minimize error as required in the prediction task will produce results in accordance with those observed, in particular apparent cue interaction effects. It is argued that measures estimated from prediction responses do not reflect causal ratings, but are side-effects of learning explained by adaptation in strategy to changes in presented cell frequencies. The results are reinterpreted to be in line with a causal model view, not requiring dual processes or cue competition of lower level associative processes.     

Short article Inferring causality assessments from predictive responses: Cue interaction without cue competition

The authors criticize the use of participants' predictive responses during a learning phase as a measure of causal assessments (J. M. Tangen & L. G. Allan, 2003, 2004). Simulations demonstrate that a general aim to minimize error as required in the prediction task will produce results in accordance with those observed, in particular apparent cue interaction effects. It is argued that measures estimated from prediction responses do not reflect causal ratings, but are side-effects of learning explained by adaptation in strategy to changes in presented cell frequencies. The results are reinterpreted to be in line with a causal model view, not requiring dual processes or cue competition of lower level associative processes.     

Predictive and diagnostic learning within causal models: asymmetries in cue competition.

Several researchers have recently claimed that higher order types of learning, such as categorization and causal induction, can be reduced to lower order associative learning. These claims are based in part on reports of cue competition in higher order learning, apparently analogous to blocking in classical conditioning. Three experiments are reported in which subjects had to learn to respond on the basis of cues that were defined either as possible causes of a common effect (predictive learning) or as possible effects of a common cause (diagnostic learning). The results indicate that diagnostic and predictive reasoning, far from being identical as predicted by associationistic models, are not even symmetrical. Although cue competition occurs among multiple possible causes during predictive learning, multiple possible effects need not compete during diagnostic learning. The results favor a causal-model theory.     

Judgmental overshadowing: Further evidence of cue interaction in contingency judgment

We investigated a phenomenon calledjudgmental overshadowing. Subjects predicted whether each of several patients had a disease on the basis of whether or not the patient had each of two symptoms. For all the subjects, the presence of the disease was moderately contingent on the presence of one ofthe symptoms (S1). In Condition 1 of our first experiment, the presence of the disease was highly contingent on the presence of the other symptom (S2). In Condition 2, the presence of the disease was independent of S2. Judgmental overshadowing occurred in that the S1-disease contingency was judged to be stronger in Condition 2 than in Condition 1. Subsequent experiments showed that judgmental overshadowing depends little on the form of the judgment, is not due to a response bias or contrast effect, and does not depend on subjects’ actively diagnosing each patient. These results are consistent with, and are generally predicted by, an associative-learning model of contingency judgment.     

Contextual control of biconditional task performance: Evidence for cue and response competition in rats

A novel paradigm is presented that was designed to mimic aspects of cue and response competition seen in humans in conflict procedures such as the Stroop task. Rats were trained simultaneously on two biconditional discrimination tasks, one auditory and one visual, in two different contexts: C1, in which A1:LP1 → R, A2:LP2 → R; and C2, in which V1:LP1 → R, V2:LP2 → R, where C1/C2 represent different training contexts (produced by different operant chambers), A1/A2 are different auditory cues, V1/V2 are different visual cues, LP1/LP2 are discrete operant responses, and R is reward. At test, rats received presentations of audiovisual compounds of these training stimuli in extinction. These compounds had dictated either the same (A1V1 or A2V2) or different (A1V2 or A2V1) responses during training: termed congruent and incongruent trials, respectively. Experiment 1 showed that following equal training on the two biconditional tasks, the contextual cues came to control responding to conflicting information provided by incongruent stimulus compounds such that animals responded according to the stimulus element previously trained in that test context. Experiment 2 demonstrated that differential training on the biconditional discriminations (with rats receiving training on the two discriminations in the ratio 3∶1) resulted in greater interference from the overtrained task when animals were tested in the undertrained context. This finding is similar to the classic Stroop asymmetry seen in human performance whereby dominant word reading interferes with colour naming for incongruent colour–word compounds. Further analysis also revealed some evidence for a reverse Stroop effect in which the undertrained stimulus element interfered with performance on the overtrained task.     

Limited attention and cue order consistency affect predictive learning: a test of similarity measures

The authors empirically tested the similarity metrics underlying 2 predictive-learning theories: J. K. Kruschke's (1992) attention learning covering map and J. M. Pearce's (1987, 1994) configural models. In Experiment 1, participants concurrently learned 3 types of discriminations: simple (A- vs. B+), common cue (XC- vs. XD+), and compound (YE- vs. ZF+). Accuracy was ordered: simple > compound > common cue. Neither model anticipated this ordering. In Experiment 2, cue order in 2-element configurations was either inconsistent (e.g., YE and EY) as in Experiment 1 or consistent (e.g., EY throughout). Although accuracy differences were smaller under consistent ordering, the relative difficulty of the tasks was the same as in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, common cue and compound discriminations were tested in different participants to determine whether the ordering of difficulty in Experiments 1 and 2 was caused by differential generalization mediated by the number of elements; the ordering was the same as in Experiments 1 and 2. These results suggest the need for differential attention to event presence and absence and to mechanisms that incorporate limited attentional capacity.     

Cue interaction and judgments of causality: Contributions of causal and associative processes

In four experiments, the predictions made by causal model theory and the Rescorla-Wagner model were tested by using a cue interaction paradigm that measures the relative response to a given event based on the influence or salience of an alternative event. Experiments 1 and 2 uncorrelated two variables that have typically been confounded in the literature (causal order and the number of cues and outcomes) and demonstrated that overall contingency judgments are influenced by the causal structure of the events. Experiment 3 showed that trial-by-trial prediction responses, a second measure of causal assessment, were not influenced by the causal structure of the described events. Experiment 4 revealed that participants became less sensitive to the influence of the causal structure in both their ratings and their predictions as trials progressed. Thus, two experiments provided evidence for high-level (causal reasoning) processes, and two experiments provided evidence for low-level (associative) processes. We argue that both factors influence causal assessment, depending on what is being asked about the events and participants' experience with those events.     

Additivity pretraining and cue competition effects: developmental evidence for a reasoning-based account of causal learning

The effect of additivity pretraining on blocking has been taken as evidence for a reasoning account of human and animal causal learning. If inferential reasoning underpins this effect, then developmental differences in the magnitude of this effect in children would be expected. Experiment 1 examined cue competition effects in children's (4- to 5-year-olds and 6- to 7-year-olds) causal learning using a new paradigm analogous to the food allergy task used in studies of human adult causal learning. Blocking was stronger in the older than the younger children, and additivity pretraining only affected blocking in the older group. Unovershadowing was not affected by age or by pretraining. In experiment 2, levels of blocking were found to be correlated with the ability to answer questions that required children to reason about additivity. Our results support an inferential reasoning explanation of cue competition effects.     

Affective responses to stretching exercises: Exploring the timing of assessments

Affective responses during exercise have been identified as a predictor of exercise adherence. However, research has been mostly limited to aerobic and resistance exercise. Considering that stretching activities are also an important component of physical fitness, this quasi-experimental study was designed to: 1) compare affective responses during and immediately after stretching exercises in apparently healthy adults, and 2) assess the consistency and repeatability of affect ratings obtained one week apart. For this purpose, we analyzed the Feeling Scale (FS) and Felt Arousal Scale (FAS) ratings using Time (during and after stretching) x Intensity (light, moderate, vigorous) x Stretched Muscle Group (quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, latissimus dorsi, triceps) with repeated measures analysis of variance (ANCOVA) in 34 participants (21 males; aged 32.8 ± 8.6 years). The repeatability of FS and FAS ratings was assessed using two-way random-effects models, Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC), and Bland-Altman plots. FS scores were higher following the stretching exercises, whereas FAS scores were lower, particularly in the vigorous intensity. In general, the inter-day repeatability for FS and FAS measurements was good across muscle groups. ICC tended to be higher at vigorous intensities. Ratings of core affect can be collected during static passive stretches using the FAS and FAS in ecologically valid settings. These results suggest that an adequate assessment of core affective responses to stretching activities should be performed during the exercises.     

Experiences of activity and causality in schizophrenia: When predictive deficits lead to a retrospective over-binding

In this paper I discuss an intriguing and relatively little studied symptomatic expression of schizophrenia known as experiences of activity in which patients form the delusion that they can control some external events by the sole means of their mind. I argue that experiences of activity result from patients being prone to aberrantly infer causal relations between unrelated events in a retrospective way owing to widespread predictive deficits. Moreover, I suggest that such deficits may, in addition, lead to an aberrant intentional binding effect i.e., the subjective compression of the temporal interval between an intentional action and its external effects (Haggard et al., 2002a, Haggard et al., 2002b). In particular, it might be that patient’s thoughts are bound to the external events they aimed to control producing, arguably, a temporal contiguity between these two components. Such temporal contiguity would reinforce or sustain the (causal) feeling that the patient mind is directly causally efficient.     

Asymmetries in cue competition in forward and backward blocking designs: Further evidence for causal model theory

A hallmark feature of elemental associative learning theories is that multiple cues compete for associative strength when presented with an outcome. Cue competition effects have been observed in humans, both in forward and in backward blocking procedures (e.g., Shanks, 1985) and are often interpreted as evidence for an associative account of human causal learning (e.g., Shanks & Dickinson, 1987). Waldmann and Holyoak (1992), however, demonstrated that cue competition only occurs in predictive, and not diagnostic, learning paradigms. While unexplainable from an associative perspective, this asymmetry readily follows from structural considerations of causal model theory. In this paper, we show that causal models determine the extent of cue competition not only in forward but also in backward blocking designs. Implications for associative and inferential accounts of causal learning are discussed.     

Understanding responses to predictive genetic testing: A grounded theory approach

Abstract

In view of the absence of data concerning the understanding and experience of families in which one or more members have undergone predictive genetic testing, a pilot study using a qualitative methodology was conducted with members of families at risk for the late-onset genetic disease, familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP). Semistructured interviews were conducted to elicit illness representations, with responses tape-recorded and analysed using a grounded theory approach. Several themes emerged. The most striking was that when genetic testing indicated an extremely low risk of developing the disease, there was a desire to continue regular bowel screening, even though it was experienced as extremely aversive. Possible explanations draw upon both other themes of the interviews, and psychological models. The role of “functional pessimism” and “uncertain wellness” in maintaining a high threat from the disease, and the role of reinforcement and the nature of tests in providing bowel screening with a high value are discussed.     

Causal powers and preventers: An explanatory account of cue interaction effects in human causal judgement

According to the causal powers theory, all causal relations are understood in terms of causal powers of one thing producing an effect by acting on liability of another thing. Powers can vary in strength, and their operation also depends on the presence of preventers. When an effect occurs, there is a need to account for the occurrence by assigning sufficient strength to produce it to its possible causes. Contingency information is used to estimate strengths of powers and preventers and the extent to which they account for occurrences and nonoccurrences of the outcome. People make causal judgements from contingency information by processes of inference that interpret evidence in terms of this fundamental understanding. From this account it is possible to derive a computational model based on a common set of principles that involve estimating strengths, using these estimates to interpret ambiguous information, and integrating the resultant evidence in a weighted averaging model. It is shown that the model predicts cue interaction effects in human causal judgement, including forward and backward blocking, second and third order backward blocking, forward and backward conditioned inhibition, recovery from overshadowing, superlearning, and backward superlearning.     

Age-differential effects on updating cue information: Evidence from event-related potentials

Recent models on cognitive aging consider the ability to maintain and update context information to be a key source of age-related impairments in various cognitive tasks (Braver & Barch in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 26: 809–817, 2002). Context updating has been investigated with a modified AX-continuous-performance task by comparing performance and brain activity between context-dependent trials (i.e., correct responses require updating of the preceding cue information) and context-independent trials (i.e., correct responses are independent of cue information). We used an event-related potential (ERP) approach to identify sources of age differences in context processing in the early and late processing of cue information. Our behavioral data showed longer latencies and higher error rates on context-dependent than on context-independent trials for older than for younger adults, suggesting age-related impairments in context updating. The ERP data revealed larger P3b amplitudes for context-dependent than for context-independent trials only in younger adults. In contrast, in older adults, P3b amplitudes were more evenly distributed across the scalp and did not differ between context conditions. Interestingly, older but not younger adults were sensitive to changes of cue identity, as indicated by larger P3b amplitudes on cue-change than on cue-repeat trials, irrespective of the actual context condition. We also found a larger CNV on context-dependent than on context-independent trials, reflecting active maintenance of context information and response preparation. The age-differential effects in the P3b suggest that both younger and older adults were engaged in updating task-relevant information, but relied on different information: Whereas younger participants indeed relied on context cues to update and reconfigure the task settings, older adults relied on changes in cue identity, irrespective of context information.     

Ontological issues in distance perception: cue use under full cue conditions cannot be inferred from use under controlled conditions

Phosphorescent square tiles (arranged to yield a single image size) were viewed in the dark by 56 monocular observers who utilized a chinrest. The targets were placed at one of three horizontal distances and at one of three eye heights, allowing us to study the relative effect of height in the visual field (HVF) and sagittal distance on observers' verbal reports of the horizontal distance at which the object lay (near, middle, or far). In Experiment 1, we found that reports covaried primarily with HVF and, as predicted, they exhibited a weak paradoxical inverse relation with horizontal distance. In a second and third experiment, a visible surface was placed under the targets at the three eye heights in both dark and fully lighted conditions. In this situation, the inverse distance relation disappeared, and HVF no longer influenced the judgments of most observers. The results show that information projected from relevant support surfaces is essential for veridical information about object distance. These results raise fundamental issues for perceptual researchers regarding how to decide when a cue has been properly delineated, given the assumption that the relation between a cue and what it specifies is probabilistic.