Summarizing a Psychological article

THEORIES OF CAUSAL LEARNING

When Learning Affects Sensitivity to Base Rates : Challenges for Theories of Causal Learning (A Psychological Article Summary

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In the article entitled When Learning Affects Sensitivity to Base Rates : Challenges for theories of Causal Learning ' written by Ulf-Dietrich Reips and Michael R . Waldmann , theories causal learning was put to test , more specifically the causal-model theory and the associative theories . With this , the causal-model theory assumes that learners form a representation of

causal models regardless of the in which learning information is presented (Reips and Waldmann , 2006 As with the associative theories , the researchers decided to take on the Rescorla-Wagner theory of associative learning . Associative learning theories tend to place cues and outcomes simply for the predictive and diagnostic learning (Reips and Waldmann , 2006

Predictive learning entailed the prediction of symptoms based on the disease presented to them while diagnostic learning required the prediction of diseases based on the symptoms given to them . Thus , it can be said that predictive learning is the forecasting of the effects based on the causes . On the other hand , diagnostic learning is the determination of the causes based on the effects . These two causal learning methods were placed against the variable of base rates . The researchers did the study because in general , they wanted to find out whether the use of base rates was affected by the learning whether it is predictive learning or through diagnostic learning Moreover , they wanted to test whether the base rates were encoded and if this was put to use . Also , they wanted to find out whether the increasing complexity of the ideas would affect the use of base rates The researchers conducted studies on students coming from the University of T 'bingen . They were given a list of fictitious diseases and their corresponding symptoms with other diseases given more likelihood than the other /s that were in the form of an inverted M . Three experiments were done which involved almost the same procedures with a little alteration for each experiment . The first experiment was done with the purpose of finding out whether learners have the competency or correctly incorporating base-rate information regardless of the sequence of learning (Reips and Waldmann , 2006 . The purpose of the second experiment was to Results were later on computed using the ANOVA

The number of participants varied for the three experiments but is similar in terms of the school where they came from , which is the previously mentioned University of T 'bingen . For the first experiment the participants composed of 24 students who were given participation credit or were paid DM 5 , where half of this group was randomly assigned to either of the two learning conditions , predictive or diagnostic learning (Reips and Waldmann , 2006 . In the second experiment , there were 32 participants composing mostly of students from the same university who were recruited at the cafeteria . Just the...