No abstract

No abstract

Associative theories have been widely used to explain human contingency learning. Standard experimental procedures in the field have requested verbal judgments as a measure of the cue-outcome relationships learned. According to these theories, knowledge retrieval is based on spreading activation processes. However, verbal judgments may allow or even promote the engagement of high-order processes that may hinder the interpretation of verbal judgments as the output of automatic retrieval processes like those posited. However, previous studies on human associative memory have shown that priming tests, under the right conditions, can minimize the engagement of high-order processes and serve as a measure of low-level automatic retrieval processes. Thus, a new human contingency learning task that incorporates a recognition priming test was developed and tested here. The results showed that, as predicted by associative theories, repetition priming was found after training. In addition, the results showed that relevant learning phenomena such as forward and backward blocking could also be detected using this test. Finally, training based on instructions did not modulate the priming effect. The relevance of these findings for theories of human contingency learning and priming is discussed.

Associative and causal reasoning accounts are probably the two most influential types of accounts of causal reasoning processes. Only causal reasoning accounts predict certain asymmetries between predictive (i.e., reasoning from causes to effects) and diagnostic (i.e., reasoning from effects to causes) inferences regarding cue-interaction phenomena (e.g., the overshadowing effect). In the experiments reported here, we attempted to delimit the conditions under which these asymmetries occur. The results show that unless participants perceived the relevance of causal information to solving the task, predictive and diagnostic inferences were symmetrical. Specifically, Experiments 1A and 1B showed that implicitly stressing the relevance of causal information by having participants review the instructions favored the presence of asymmetries between predictive and diagnostic situations. In addition, Experiment 2 showed that explicitly stressing the relevance of causal information by stating the importance of the causal role of events after the instructions were given also favored the asymmetry.