1. Modulating the coherence effect in causal-based processing
- Author
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Marchant, Nicolás and Chaigneau, Sergio E.
- Subjects
causal reasoning ,coherence effect ,causal-basedcategorization ,similarity ,exemplar models - Abstract
Causal-based cognition is thought to be relevant for humanbeings because it allows inferring the unfolding of events.Theories of causal-based cognition offer researchers a way tounderstand inter-feature relations, above and beyond the purelyassociative relations posited by similarity theories. In thecausal-model theory (a.k.a. the Generative Model), people arethought to categorize an exemplar depending on how likely itsparticular feature combination is, given the category’s causalmodel. This mechanism predicts the coherence effect (i.e.,when people categorize, features interact). This effect has beenwidely reported in the literature. In the current experiment, wesought to specify conditions that modulate the coherenceeffect. To that end, we implemented a between-subjectsmanipulation where participants had to judge either categorymembership or category consistency. Our results show thatsubjects exhibit a larger coherence effect in consistencycondition. We discuss our results’ relevance for causal-modeltheory and for the possibility of distinguishing causal-basedfrom similarity-based processing.
- Published
- 2020