Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Mem Cognit. 2022 Aug;50(6):1269-1283. doi: 10.3758/s13421-022-01319-w. Epub 2022 Apr 28.
Prior knowledge has been shown to be an important factor in causal judgments. However, inconsistent patterns have been reported regarding the interaction between prior knowledge and the processing of contingency information. In three studies, we examined the effect of the plausibility of the putative cause on causal judgments, when prior expectations about the rate at which the cause is accompanied by the effect in question are explicitly controlled for. Results clearly show that plausibility has a clear effect that is independent of contingency information and type of task (passive or active). We also examined the role of strategy use as an individual difference in causal judgments. Specifically, the dual-strategy model suggests that people can either use a Statistical or a Counterexample strategy to process information. Across all three studies, results showed that Strategy use has a clear effect on causal judgments that is independent of both plausibility and contingency.
先前的知识被证明是因果判断的一个重要因素。然而，关于先前知识与对关联信息的处理之间的相互作用，报告的结果并不一致。在三项研究中，我们研究了当明确控制对特定效应出现的原因的出现率的先验期望时，假定原因的可能性对因果判断的影响。结果清楚地表明，可能性具有独立于关联信息和任务类型（被动或主动）的明显影响。我们还研究了策略使用作为因果判断的个体差异的作用。具体来说，双策略模型表明，人们可以使用统计策略或反例策略来处理信息。在所有三项研究中，结果表明，策略使用对因果判断有明显的影响，这种影响独立于可能性和关联。
