Causal and predictive-value judgments, but not predictions, are based on cue-outcome contingency

Abstract

In three experiments, we show that people respond differently when they make predictions as opposed to when they are asked to estimate the causal or the predictive value of cues: Their response to each of those three questions is based on different sets of information. More specifically, we show that prediction judgments depend on the probability of the outcome given the cue, whereas causal and predictive-value judgments depend on the cue-outcome contingency. Although these results might seem problematic for most associative models in their present form, they can be explained by explicitly assuming the existence of postacquisition processes that modulate participants' responses in a flexible way. Copyright 2005 Psychonomic Society, Inc.