On the role of causal intervention in multiple-cue judgment: positive and negative effects on learning.
Previous studies have suggested better learning when people actively intervene rather than when they passively observe the stimuli in a judgment task. In 4 experiments, the authors investigated the hypothesis that this improvement is associated with a shift from exemplar memory to cue abstraction. In a multiple-cue judgment task with continuous cues, the data replicated the improvement with intervention and participants who experimented more actively produced more accurate judgments. In a multiple-cue judgment task with binary cues, intervention produced poorer accuracy and participants who experimented more actively produced poorer judgments. These results provide no support for a representational shift but suggest that the improvement with active intervention may be limited to certain tasks and environments.
Enkvist
Tommy
T
Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden. tommy.enkvist@psyk.uu.se
Newell
Ben
B
Juslin
Peter
P
Olsson
Henrik
H
D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D003210:Concept Formation; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D011337:Probability Learning; D011340:Problem Solving; D011932:Reading