Polack Cody W, McConnell Bridget L, Miller Ralph R
Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, USA.
Learn Behav. 2013 Mar;41(1):25-41. doi: 10.3758/s13420-012-0075-5.
Are humans unique in their ability to interpret exogenous events as causes? We addressed this question by observing the behavior of rats for indications of causal learning. Within an operant motor-sensory preconditioning paradigm, associative surgical techniques revealed that rats attempted to control an outcome (i.e., a potential effect) by manipulating a potential exogenous cause (i.e., an intervention). Rats were able to generate an innocuous auditory stimulus. This stimulus was then paired with an aversive stimulus. The animals subsequently avoided potential generation of the predictive cue, but not if the aversive stimulus was subsequently devalued or the predictive cue was extinguished (Exp. 1). In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that the aversive stimulus we used was in fact aversive, that it was subject to devaluation, that the cue-aversive stimulus pairings did make the cue a conditioned stimulus, and that the cue was subject to extinction. In Experiments 3 and 4, we established that the decrease in leverpressing observed in Experiment 1 was goal-directed instrumental behavior rather than purely a product of Pavlovian conditioning. To the extent that interventions suggest causal reasoning, it appears that causal reasoning can be based on associations between contiguous exogenous events. Thus, contiguity appears capable of establishing causal relationships between exogenous events. Our results challenge the widely held view that causal learning is uniquely human, and suggest that causal learning is explicable in an associative framework.
人类在将外部事件解读为原因的能力上是否独一无二？我们通过观察大鼠的行为以寻找因果学习的迹象来解决这个问题。在操作性运动 - 感觉预适应范式中，联合手术技术表明，大鼠试图通过操纵一个潜在的外部原因（即一种干预）来控制一个结果（即一种潜在的效应）。大鼠能够产生一种无害的听觉刺激。然后将这种刺激与一种厌恶刺激配对。随后，动物们避免潜在地产生预测性线索，但如果厌恶刺激随后被贬值或预测性线索被消除，则不会这样（实验1）。在实验2中，我们证明了我们使用的厌恶刺激实际上是厌恶的，它会被贬值，线索 - 厌恶刺激配对确实使线索成为了条件刺激，并且线索会被消除。在实验3和4中，我们确定在实验1中观察到的杠杆按压减少是目标导向的工具性行为，而不仅仅是巴甫洛夫条件作用的产物。就干预表明因果推理而言，似乎因果推理可以基于连续外部事件之间的关联。因此，连续性似乎能够在外源事件之间建立因果关系。我们的结果挑战了因果学习是人类独有的这一广泛持有的观点，并表明因果学习在联想框架中是可以解释的。
