Distinguishing Associative and Probabilistic Contrast Theories of Human Contingency Judgment

This chapter discusses theoretical issues concerning contingency judgment. One empirical result exists that appears straightaway to challenge the idea that contingency judgments can be modeled by the Rescorla-Wagner theory. This is the finding that judgments under noncontingent schedules do not always appear to converge across trials. The idea that stimuli are represented configurally allows the results of the experiments to be accommodated; it should be acknowledged that there are a number of problems facing this approach. Account of retrospective revaluation effects requires an elemental rather than a configural analysis: in an AB → 0, B → 0 design, subjects are assumed to relate what they learn in the second stage about element B to what they already know about compound AB, such that the balance of associative strengths of A and B is altered. It is difficult to see how a configural analysis, whereby the compound AB is represented quite independently of its elements, would allow this to happen. Some recent data raise the possibility that subjects behave configurally only under certain conditions. Many researchers agree that the appropriate normative theory is provided by the Δp metric: contingency judgments should then be evaluated for their objective accuracy against Δp and are assumed to be biased whenever they deviate from that statistic. Rather than proving that contingency judgment is nonnormative, however, results should be viewed in the same way as visual illusions: manifestations of an incorrect output from a system that fundamentally does provide a true picture of the world but that can be misled as a result of having to produce a response on the basis of insufficient evidence.

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