title: Human contingency judgments: rule based or associative?
abstract: The study of the mechanism that detects the contingency between events, in both humans and nonhuman animals, is a matter of considerable research activity. Two broad categories of explanations of the acquisition of contingency information have received extensive evaluation: rule-based models and associative models. This article assess the two categories of models for human contingency judgments. The data reveal systematic departures in contingency judgments from the predictions of rule-based models. Recent studies indicate that a contiguity model of Pavlovian conditioning is a useful heuristic for conceptualizing human contingency judgments.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: L G
authors.initials: LG
authors.lastname: Allan
mesh_terms: D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male