Barberia Itxaso, Vadillo Miguel A, Rodríguez-Ferreiro Javier
Departament de Cognició, Desenvolupament y Psicologia de la Educació, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Departamento de Psicología Básica, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
Front Psychol. 2019 Jan 24;10:24. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00024. eCollection 2019.
We carried out an experiment using a conventional causal learning task but extending the number of learning trials participants were exposed to. Participants in the standard training group were exposed to 48 learning trials before being asked about the potential causal relationship under examination, whereas for participants in the long training group the length of training was extended to 288 trials. In both groups, the event acting as the potential cause had zero correlation with the occurrence of the outcome, but both the outcome density and the cause density were high, therefore providing a breeding ground for the emergence of a causal illusion. In contradiction to the predictions of associative models such the Rescorla-Wagner model, we found moderate evidence against the hypothesis that extending the learning phase alters the causal illusion. However, assessing causal impressions recurrently did weaken participants' causal illusions.
我们进行了一项实验，使用传统的因果学习任务，但增加了参与者接触的学习试验次数。标准训练组的参与者在被问及正在研究的潜在因果关系之前，要进行48次学习试验，而长训练组的参与者的训练长度则延长到288次试验。在两组中，作为潜在原因的事件与结果的发生零相关，但结果密度和原因密度都很高，因此为因果错觉的出现提供了滋生地。与诸如雷斯克拉-瓦格纳模型等联想模型的预测相反，我们发现有适度的证据反对延长学习阶段会改变因果错觉这一假设。然而，反复评估因果印象确实削弱了参与者的因果错觉。
