Selective attention in human causal learning and recognition memory

It was hypothesized that similar selective attention processes might underlie two important empirical phenomena from traditionally distinct fields of cognitive psychology; the effect of divided attention on memory, and the blocking effect in associative learning. To investigate this hypothesis, ten experiments were conducted to investigate the role of selective attention in recognition and causal learning. In order to do so, a new category-based causal judgment task was constructed (Chapter 1), which allowed measurement of both causal strength and cue recognition. This procedure was then used to examine the blocking effect, in which pre-training with one cue, A, typically results in impaired learning about a second cue, B, when those two cues are trained in compound (AB+). Participants also demonstrated decreased recognition performance for the causally redundant cue B, suggesting that less attention had been paid to it in training (Chapter 3). Neither blocking in recognition, nor in causal judgment, was influenced by an additivity manipulation (Chapter 4). These results are consistent with the idea that attention is preferentially allocated towards the more predictive cue A, and away from the less predictive cue B (e.g., Mackintosh, 1975). Contrary to this hypothesis, poorer recognition was observed for predictive cues than for novel, or unreliable predictors (Chapter 5). Finally, in Chapter 6, a dissociation was observed between memory encoding and the rate at which causal learning occurred; participants learned more rapidly about previously predictive cues (e.g. A) than previously non-predictive cues (e.g. E), but demonstrated equivalently poor recognition for both types of cues (e.g. A and E). In Chapter 7, the present data are discussed in relation to models of associative learning, categorization and memory. A new model, based upon Mackintosh (1975) and Kruschke (1992) is proposed to account for the observed relationship between the extent to which each cue is attended to, learned about and later recognized