Judgement frequency, belief revision, and serial processing of causal information.
The main aim of this research was to study the cognitive architecture underlying causal/covariation learning by investigating the frequency of judgement effect. Previous research has shown that decreasing the number of trials between opportunities to make a judgement in a covariation learning task led to a higher score after an a or d type of trial (positive cases) than after b and c trials (negative cases). Experiment I replicated this effect using a trial-by-trial procedure and examined the conditions under which it occurs. Experiment 2 demonstrated a similar frequency of judgement effect when the information was presented in the form of contingency tables. Associative or statistical single-mechanism accounts of causal and covariation learning do not provide a satisfactory explanation for these findings. An alternative belief revision model is presented.
Departamento de Psicología Experimental, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Granada, Spain. acatena@ugr.es
Andrés
A
Catena
Antonio
A
Maldonado
Jesús L
JL
Megías
Bettina
B
Frese
D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological