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| Research article summary (published 29 Sep 2002): |
How temporal assumptions influence causal judgments.
Full Abstract
Causal learning typically entails the problem of being confronted with a large number of potentially relevant statistical relations. One type of constraint that may guide the choice of appropriate statistical indicators of causality are assumptions about temporal delays between causes and effects. There have been a few previous studies in which the role of temporal relations in the learning of events that are experienced in real time have been investigated. However, human causal reasoning may also be based on verbally described events, rather than on direct experiences of the events to which the descriptions refer. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether assumptions about the temporal characteristics of the events that are being described also affect causal judgment. Three experiments are presented that demonstrate that different temporal assumptions about causal delays may lead to dramatically different causal judgments, despite identical leaning inputs. In particular, the experiments show that temporal assumptions guide the choice of appropriate statistical indicators of causality by structuring the event stream (Experiment 1), by selecting the potential causes among a set of competing candidates (Experiment 2), and by influencing the level of aggregation of events (Experiment 3).
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Author information
Author/s: Hagmayer, York (Y); Waldmann, Michael R (MR);
Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany. york.hagmayer(-atsign-)bio.uni-goettingen.de
Journal and publication information
Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Journal: Memory & cognition (Mem Cognit), published in United States. (Language: eng)
Reference: 2002-Oct; vol 30 (issue 7) : pp 1128-37
Dates: Created 2002/12/31; Completed 2003/02/12; Revised 2006/11/15;
PMID: 12507377, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)
Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.
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