Abstract
We analyze how subjects make causal judgments based on contingency information in two paradigms. In the discrete paradigm, subjects are given specific information about the frequency a, with which a purported cause occurs with the effect; the frequency b, with which it occurs without the effect; the frequency c, with which the effect occurs when the cause is absent; and the frequency d, with which both cause and effect are absent. Subjects respond toP 1 =a/(a+b) andP 2 =c/(c+d). Some subjects’ ratings are just a function ofP 1, while others are a function of ΔP =P 1 -P 2. Subjects’ postexperiment reports are accurate reflections of which model they use. Combining these two types of subjects results in data well fit by the weighted ΔP model (Allan, 1993). In the continuous paradigm, subjects control the purported causes (by clicking a mouse) and observe whether an effect occurs. Because causes and effects occur continuously in time, it is not possible to explicitly pair causes and effects. Rather, subjects report that they are responding to the rate at which the effects occur when they click versus when they do not click. Their ratings are a function of rates and not probabilities. In general, we argue that subjects’ causal ratings are judgments of the magnitude of perceptually salient variables in the experiment.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Allan, L. G. (1980). A note on measurement of contingency between two binary variables in judgment tasks.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society,15, 147–149.
Allan, L. G. (1993). Human contingency judgments: Rule based or associative?Psychological Bulletin,114, 435–448.
Allan, L. G., &Jenkins, H. M. (1980). The judgment of contingency and the nature of the response alternatives.Canadian Journal of Psychology,34, 1–11.
Allan, L. G., &Jenkins, H. M. (1983). The effect of representations of binary variables on judgment of influence.Learning & Motivation,14, 381–405.
Anderson, J. R. (1990).The adaptive character of thought. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Arkes, H. R., &Harkness, A. R. (1983). Estimates of contingency between two dichotomous variables.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,112, 117–135.
Barlow, H. B., &Mollon, J. D. (Eds.) (1982).The senses. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Busemeyer, J. R. (1991). Intuitive statistical estimation. In N. H. Anderson (Ed.),Contributions to information integration theory (Vol. 1, pp. 187–215). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Chapman, G. B., &Robbins, S. J. (1990). Cue interaction in human contingency judgment.Memory & Cognition,18, 537–545.
Chatlosh, D. L., Neunaber, D. J., &Wasserman, E. A. (1985). Response-outcome contingency: Behavioral and judgmental effects of appetitive and aversive outcomes with college students.Learning & Motivation,16, 1–34.
Wasserman, E. A. (1990). Detecting response-outcome relations: Toward an understanding of the causal texture of the environment. In G. H. Bower (Ed.),The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 26, pp. 27–82). San Diego: Academic Press.
Wasserman, E. A., Dorner, W. W., &Kao, S.-F. (1990). Contributions of specific cell information to judgments of interevent contingency.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,16, 509–521.
Wasserman, E. A., Elek, S. M., Chatlosh, D. C., &Baker, A. G. (1993). Rating causal relations: Role of probability in judgments of response-outcome contingency.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,19, 174–188.
Wasserman, E. A., &Neunaber, D. J. (1986). College students’ responding to and rating of contingency relations: The role of temporal contiguity.Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,46, 15–35.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was supported by Contract N00014-91-J-1597 from the Office of Naval Research. We would like to thank Jon Fincham for programming the four experiments and Marsha Lovett and Lael Schooler for their comments on the paper.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Anderson, J.R., Sheu, CF. Causal inferences as perceptual judgments. Memory & Cognition 23, 510–524 (1995). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197251
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197251