title: Effect of outcome valence on positive and negative patterning in human causal reasoning.
abstract: The importance of configural cues and whether a situation involves beneficent or maleficent outcomes was investigated in two experiments on human causal reasoning, based on experienced causal information. Participants learned positive and negative patterning discriminations involving either beneficent or maleficent outcomes in a health-reasoning task and in a social-reasoning task. With maleficent outcomes, positive patterning was consistently easier to learn than negative patterning, a positive patterning advantage that is predicted by current associative theories and commonly taken as evidence for configural cues. However, with beneficent outcomes, the two discrimination tasks were not significantly different in ease of learning, a result not predicted by current theories. The reliable positive patterning effect found with maleficent outcomes broadens the range of conditions in which the effect can be shown in causal reasoning. The novel effect of outcome valence poses an interesting theoretical challenge for attempts to account for the relation between learning about individual cues and combinations of those cues.
authors.affiliation: Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey 08102, USA. bwhitlow@camden.rutgers.edu
authors.forename: J W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Whitlow
mesh_terms: D001245:Association Learning; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D009042:Motivation; D011340:Problem Solving; D012718:Set, Psychology
references.citation: Behav Brain Res. 2007 Jan 25;176(2):314-22
references.pmid: 17113657
references.citation: J Comp Physiol Psychol. 1972 May;79(2):307-17
references.pmid: 5025999
references.citation: Q J Exp Psychol B. 2002 Oct;55(4):311-29
references.pmid: 12350284
references.citation: Psychol Rev. 2006 Jul;113(3):584-605
references.pmid: 16802882
references.citation: Biol Psychol. 2003 Feb;62(2):133-46
references.pmid: 12581688
references.citation: Q J Exp Psychol A. 2002 Jan;55(1):173-93
references.pmid: 11873846
references.citation: Cogn Psychol. 1985 Oct;17(4):391-416
references.pmid: 4064622
references.citation: J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 1996 Jan;22(1):182-96
references.pmid: 8648285
references.citation: J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process. 1998 Apr;24(2):136-50
references.pmid: 9556907
references.citation: Q J Exp Psychol B. 2000 May;53(2):121-38
references.pmid: 10881604
references.citation: Q J Exp Psychol A. 2002 Jul;55(3):965-85
references.pmid: 12188522
references.citation: Anim Learn Behav. 2002 May;30(2):73-95
references.pmid: 12141138
references.citation: Psychol Rev. 1994 Oct;101(4):587-607
references.pmid: 7984708
references.citation: Learn Mem. 2001 Mar-Apr;8(2):70-8
references.pmid: 11274252
references.citation: Am Psychol. 2001 Mar;56(3):218-26
references.pmid: 11315248
references.citation: Psychon Bull Rev. 2001 Sep;8(3):600-8
references.pmid: 11700912
references.citation: Anim Learn Behav. 2002 Aug;30(3):177-200
references.pmid: 12391785
references.citation: Q J Exp Psychol B. 2003 Feb;56(1):7-29
references.pmid: 12623534
references.citation: Cogn Emot. 2005 May 1;19(3):313-332
references.pmid: 21852891
references.citation: Cognition. 1989 Apr;31(3):187-276
references.pmid: 2743748
references.citation: J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process. 2008 Jan;34(1):144-54
references.pmid: 18248121
references.citation: J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process. 2002 Oct;28(4):331-46
references.pmid: 12395491
references.citation: J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process. 2005 Apr;31(2):226-36
references.pmid: 15839778
references.citation: Biol Psychol. 2001 Mar;56(1):45-61
references.pmid: 11240314