Does the type of judgement required modulate cue competition?
According to the comparator process hypothesis (Matute, Arcediano, & Miller, 1996), cue competition in the learning of between-events relationships arises if the judgement required involves a comparison between the probability of the outcome given the target cue and the probability of the outcome given the competing cue. Alternatively, other associative accounts (the Rescorla-Wagner model: Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) conceive cue competition as a learning deficit affecting the target cue-outcome association. Consequently, the comparator process hypothesis predicts that cue competition occurs in inference judgements but not in contiguity ones, for only the first type of judgement implicitly involves such a comparison. On the other hand, the Rescorla-Wagner model predicts cue competition in both inference and contiguity judgements, because it establishes no relevant role for the type of judgement in producing cue competition. In Experiments 1 and 2 we manipulated the relative validity of cues and the type of question (inference vs. contiguity) in a predictive learning task. In both experiments we found a cue competition effect, but no interaction between the relative validity of cues and the type of question, suggesting that the Rescorla-Wagner theory suffices to explain cue competition.
Cobos
P L
PL
Departamento de Psicología Básica, Psicobiología y Metodología de las Ciencias del Comportamiento, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Málaga, Spain. p_cobos@uma.es
Caño
A
A
López
F J
FJ
Luque
J L
JL
Almaraz
J
J
D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011336:Probability