Attribution of Causality to Common and Distinctive Elements of Compound Stimuli

Given the task of diagnosing the source of a patient's allergic reaction, college students judged the causal efficacy of common (X) and distinctive (A and B) elements of compound stimuli: AX and BX. As the differential correlation of AX and BX with the occurrence and nonoccurrence of the allergic reaction rose from .00 to 1.00, ratings of the distinctive A and B elements diverged; most importantly, ratings of the common X element fell. These causal judgments of humans closely parallel the conditioned responses of animals in associative learning studies, and clearly disclose that stimuli compete with one another for control over behavior.

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