PSYC 355 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Gie, Common Cause, Causal Structure

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 355
• Professor: Valerie Ann Kuhlmeier

Document Summary

Lecture 6 (week 7): causality: launching events, association and causality, inferring causal structure, human cognitive development: detecting blickets, launching events. The events themselves do not present causality the visual input we get is just coincident motion. Mi(cid:272)hotte (cid:894)(cid:1005)9(cid:1004)(cid:1004)s(cid:895): yes, the pe(cid:396)(cid:272)eptio(cid:374) is a(cid:374) illusio(cid:374). But, it(cid:859)s a pe(cid:396)(cid:272)eption of a causal interaction. Studies with human infants (leslie & keeble, 1987) Half of infants are habituated to direct launching, the other half habituated to delayed reaction: delayed reaction looks less causal. Test: used the same objects but reversed the role of the objects: only infants habituated to the direct launching looked longer. Results: interpreted as the infants understood causality. Instead of focusing on the natural causality of launching events, most research has focused on arbitrary causality. Arbitrary causality- (cid:449)he(cid:374) (cid:449)hat ge(cid:374)e(cid:396)ates the (cid:272)ausal i(cid:374)te(cid:396)a(cid:272)tio(cid:374) is(cid:374)(cid:859)t o(cid:271)(cid:448)ious- like when pressing a button (cid:862)(cid:272)auses(cid:863) food to appea(cid:396: association and causality.