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On the origin of personal causal theories

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review volume 2, pages 83–104 (1995)Cite this article

Abstract

Detecting the causal relations among environmental events is an important facet of learning. Certain variables have been identified which influence both human causal attribution and animal learning: temporal priority, temporal and spatial contiguity, covariation and contingency, and prior experience. Recent research has continued to find distinct commonalities between the influence these variables have in the two domains, supporting a neo-Humean analysis of the origins of personal causal theories. The cues to causality determine which event relationships will be judged as causal; personal causal theories emerge as a result of these judgments and in turn affect future attributions. An examination of animal learning research motivates further extensions of the analogy. Researchers are encouraged to study real-time causal attributions, to study additional methodological analogies to conditioning paradigms, and to develop rich learning accounts of the acquisition of causal theories.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, 317 Elliott Hall, 55455, Minneapolis, MN

    Michael E. Young

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Correspondence to Michael E. Young.

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Preparation of this article was supported by the University of Minnesota Center for Research on Learning, Perception, and Cognition, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-07151). I would like to thank Randy Fletcher, Bruce Overmier, Paul van den Broek, and four anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

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Young, M.E. On the origin of personal causal theories. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 2, 83–104 (1995). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03214413

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Keywords

  • Latent Inhibition
  • Journal ofExperimental Psychology
  • Associative Strength
  • Causal Attribution
  • Causal Theory