Dennis M J, Ahn W K
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2001 Jan;29(1):152-64. doi: 10.3758/bf03195749.
The order in which people receive information has a substantial effect on subsequent judgment and inference. Our focus is on the order of covariation evidence in causal learning. The first experiment shows that the initial presentation of evidence suggesting a generative causal relationship (the joint presence or joint absence of cause and effect) leads to higher judged causal strength than does the initial presentation of evidence suggesting an inhibitory relationship (the presence of cause or effect in the absence of the other). Additional studies show that this primacy effect is unlikely to be due to fatigue or to an insufficient number of learning trials. These results are not readily explained by current contingency-based or associative theories of causal induction.
人们接收信息的顺序对后续的判断和推理有重大影响。我们关注的是因果学习中协变证据的顺序。第一个实验表明，最初呈现暗示生成性因果关系的证据（原因和结果同时出现或同时不出现）比最初呈现暗示抑制性因果关系的证据（在没有另一个因素的情况下出现原因或结果）会导致更高的因果强度判断。进一步的研究表明，这种首因效应不太可能是由于疲劳或学习试验次数不足所致。当前基于偶然性或联想性的因果归纳理论难以解释这些结果。
