Journal article
Rating Causal Relations: Role of Probability in Judgments of Response-Outcome Contingency
Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition, Vol.19(1), pp.174-188
01/1993
DOI: 10.1037/0278-7393.19.1.174
Abstract
We investigated the possible role of the conditional probabilities of an outcome given a response P(O|R) and of an outcome given the absence of a response P(O|NoR) in mediating college students' judgments of response-outcome contingency. A total of 150 subjects in three experiments was asked to describe the effect that telegraph key tapping had on the brief illumination of a lamp. Subjects' ratings along a prevent-cause scale closely approximated the scheduled contingencies between response (R = key tap) and outcome (O = lamp illumination), as measured by the delta coefficient ΔP = P(O|R) − P(O|NoR) (Experiments 1 and 3). Subjects also sensitively rated the conditional probabilities of an outcome when they tapped the key and when they refrained from doing so (Experiments 2 and 3). Nevertheless, the evidence failed to support the hypothesis that causal ratings were mediated by subjective judgments of P(O|R) and P(O|NoR) because the errors made in judging the conditional probabilities were not consistent with the errors made judging ΔP. We suggest that an associative explanation derived from a model devised by
R. A. Rescorla and A. R. Wagner (1972)
might account for these and other results.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Rating Causal Relations: Role of Probability in Judgments of Response-Outcome Contingency
- Creators
- E. A Wasserman - Department of Psychology, University of IowaS. M Elek - Department of Psychology, University of IowaD. L Chatlosh - Department of Psychology, University of IowaA. G Baker - Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition, Vol.19(1), pp.174-188
- Publisher
- American Psychological Association
- DOI
- 10.1037/0278-7393.19.1.174
- ISSN
- 0278-7393
- eISSN
- 1939-1285
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 01/1993
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
- Record Identifier
- 9984070470902771
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