CausalityThe relationship between cause and effect.  The principle that all events have sufficient causes.

The differentia (distinguishing properties/characteristics) of causality which all causal relations have in common:

The relationships held between events, objects or states of affairs. The first event A (the cause) is a reason that brings about the second event B (the effect)

The first event A chronologically precedes the second event B (in some cases, a simple spatial or even conceptual separation is accepted: "Tides are caused by the moon", "Day is caused by

the rotation of the Earth", "Lightning causes thunder") Events like A are consistently followed by events like B

The cue ball causes the eight ball to roll into pocket."

"Heat causes water to boil." "The Moon's gravity causes the Earth's tides." "A hard blow to the arm causes a bruise." "My pushing the accelerator caused the car to

go faster."

CONDITIONING AND CAUSATION• Causality detection is vital to

behavioral adaptation in humans.• Can associative learning principles

in animals teach us something about how people detect causes?

• Recently, methods and principles of operant and Pavlovian conditioning in animals have been applied to causality detection in humans.

CONDITIONING AND CAUSATION• How plausible is this connection?• In text, we have argued that associative

learning is “causality detection.” • Animals appear to be learning about

causes of important events in world. • In Pavlovian conditioning, causes are

environmental stimuli.• In operant conditioning, causes are

organism’s own actions.

CONDITIONING AND CAUSATION• How can we evaluate this

account?• One can directly study human

causal judgment using methods inspired by animal learning research.

David Hume and Causality

• Familiarity with David Hume’s ideas is helpful in order to comprehend causality detection.

• More than any other thinker, this 18th century Scottish philosopher has shaped our understanding of causality detection.

David Hume and Causality

• Causation is psychological impression.• Succession of experiences is given;

but, impression of connection goes beyond sensory evidence.

• For example, lightning regularly precedes thunder.

• We associate one with the other; but, we do not sense their interconnection.

Unconsoius, Black box ; A form of learning that does not relie on logic and reason (language)

Associative modular

General type of learning across all animals

Causality

• Pavlov contiguity of events

• Skinner contiguity of consequences

• HUME Causality

David Hume and Causality

• Three conditions are crucial to forming causal impressions:

• 1. Cause and effect must be contiguous in space and time.

• 2. Cause must occur prior to effect.

• 3. There must be a constant connection between cause and effect.

David Hume and Causality

• Three other conditions better define and sharpen causal attributions:

• 4. Same cause produces same effect, same effect comes from same cause.

• 5. When several different events produce same effect, it must be due to something that events share.

• 6. Any difference between effects of similar events must arise because events differ from one another.

David Hume and Causality• Mechanical model of causal

perception:• Completely non-conscious

processes lead us to automatically associate consistently contiguous experiences.

• This learning is too important to leave to rational thought.

Understanding cause and effect is essentail for all organisms to suvive

David Hume and Causality

• Hume’s principles suggest that a single pairing of cause and effect will not forge a firm causal association.

• A causal impression rises to its greatest strength by degrees as a function of number of cause-effect pairings.

• Consistency of relation affects ultimate strength of causal association; any inconsistency weakens connection.

David Hume and Causality

• Also relevant to strength of causality judgment is superiority of one possible cause above rival candidates.

• If several events often precede a given event and if one does so more reliably than others, then it will be singled out as the cause.

David Hume and Causality• Three conditions are crucial to forming

causal impressions:• 1. Cause and effect must be

contiguous in space and time.

• 2. Cause must occur prior to effect.

• 3. There must be a constant connection between cause and effect.

CONSISTENCY

SUPERIORITY

NUMBER

David Hume and Causality

• Three other conditions better define and sharpen causal attributions:

• 4. Same cause produces same effect, same effect comes from same cause.

• 5. When several different events produce same effect, it must be due to something that events share.

• 6. Any difference between effects of similar events must arise because events differ from one another.

CONSISTENCY

NUMBER

SUPERIORITY

David Hume and Causality• Hume’s ideas are similar to Rescorla-

Wagner model of associative learning:• Is completely mechanical and phrased

as a simple mathematical equation. • Posits gradual growth of associations to

an asymptotic level.• Expects unpaired events to lower

strength of associative learning.• Involves competition among causes.

Extincition

Blocking

David Hume and Causality

• Hume hypothesized operation of same associative principles in nonhuman animals.

• This testified to the breadth of these associative principles, plus their operation in absence of language or logic.

EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF HUMAN CAUSALITY DETECTION• Just what is known about causality

detection beyond its suspected operation in animal conditioning?

• We next explore human research directed at causality detection in controlled laboratory settings.

EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF HUMAN CAUSALITY DETECTION• Contingency• Temporal contiguity• Cue competition

EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF HUMAN CAUSALITY DETECTION• Contingency• Temporal contiguity• Cue competition

Contingency

• Statistical relation between events.• Computed from 2 X 2 table.

Contingency

The 2 x 2 contingency table representing the presence and absence of a cause and an effect.

Effect present Effect absent

Cause present Cell a Cell b

Cause absent Cell c Cell d

Overestimate A and B (subjects behave)

Contingency

The 2 x 2 contingency table representing the presence and absence of a cause and an effect.

Effect present Effect absent

Cause present Cell a Cell b

Cause absent Cell c Cell d

Overestimate A and B (subjects behave)

Hume and Rescorla argue that cause and effects are detemined on a trial by trial basis

(order of training causes overestimate)

Experience by experience

Moment by moment

Real time

Contingency

• General formula: a/(a+b)-c/(c+d)• Specific experimental

investigation:• P(Light|Tap) and P(Light|No Tap)

Contingency

• Data suggest that people can quite keenly detect prevailing response-outcome contingency: positive or negative or zero.

• Under proper experimental conditions, people can with great accuracy and little bias report positive, negative, and noncontingent response-outcome relations.

Experimental questions

Must ask organinsm the correct question and provide the opertunity to answer (behave) appropriatly

The 2 x 2 contingency table representing the presence and absence of a cause and an effect.

Effect present Effect absent

Cause present Cell a Cell b

Cause absent Cell c Cell d

Contingency Learning Curves• Do people show negatively

accelerated learning curves in contingency judgment tasks?

∆Vn = K(— Vn-1)

Contingency Learning Curves• Do people show negatively

accelerated learning curves in contingency judgment tasks?

• Yes.

Humans not perfect,

Some Bias

Past experience (firing caused tanks to explode)

Just rated last trial

Contingency

• Effects of differential conditional probability and increased training are exactly what would be expected if people’s causality and contingency judgments were based on an associative learning process like that captured in Rescorla-Wagner model.

• Conditioned inhibition also occurs.

What happen last trial +

What has happened in the past =

Future likelyhhod

Humans more Flexiable

Probaliy not just an ‘assocaitive modular

But cognition,emotion, motivation, bias affect learning

EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF HUMAN CAUSALITY DETECTION• Contingency• Temporal contiguity• Cue competition

Thomas Procedure With Humans

Subjects could make outcomes (points) move forward in time and did (cause and effect) but doing so reduced the total amount of points

CONTROL

Thomas Procedure With Humans• Results are like those with rats.• Contiguity promotes operant

responding.• Contiguity also leads to more

positive causal ratings, despite no actual contingency.

• Both results also hold with negative contingency.

Temporal contiquity can ‘overshadow’ contingency in assocaition formation

Hume (superioty)

EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF HUMAN CAUSALITY DETECTION• Contingency• Temporal contiguity• Cue competition

Cue competition

• Relative validity effect• Blocking

Relative validity effect

• Group C: AX+ versus BX-• Group U: AX+/- versus BX+/-• More control by X in Group U

despite equal association of X with + and – (at first)

• True of rats, rabbits, and pigeons in conditioning experiments

• True of human causal attributions

Differentially (A,B)

Non Differentially

15.7

Blocking

• AX+ alone• A+, then AX+• Responding to X is greater in first

case for animals in conditioning experiments

• And, for humans in causal judgment experiments

15.8

Predicitive (learning)

Diagnostic (no prior causality assumtions)

LEARNING AND COGNITION: A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE

• Studies on human causality detection are consistent with Hume’s theoretical approach plus literature on Pavlovian and operant conditioning in animals.

• Concordances are not peculiar to findings discussed in Chapter 15.

• Also extends to overshadowing, configural conditioning, and occasion setting.

LEARNING AND COGNITION: A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE

• An additional concordance is that Rescorla-Wagner model is also a promising theory of causality detection in human beings.

• So, basic mechanisms of association formation may have just as much to say about causality detection in human beings as they do about conditioning in animals.

LEARNING AND COGNITION: A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE

• This is as it should be if fundamental mechanisms of learning and behavior are truly general.

• Hume’s belief in generality of associative learning and its centrality to mind and behavior is thus supported by work we have reviewed in our course and textbook.