Order effects in contingency learning: the role of task complexity.

Full Abstract

Dennis and Ahn (2001) found that during contingency learning, initial evidence influences causal judgments more than does later evidence (a primacy effect), whereas López, Shanks, Almaraz, and Fernández (1998) found the opposite (a recency effect). We propose that in contingency learning, people use initial evidence to develop an anchoring hypothesis that tends to be underadjusted by later evidence, resulting in a primacy effect. Thus, factors interfering with initial hypothesis development, such as simultaneously learning too many contingencies, as in López et al., would reduce the primacy effect. Experiment 1 showed a primacy effect with learning contingencies involving only one outcome but no primacy effect with two outcomes. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the magnitude of the primacy effect correlated with participants' verbal working memory capacity. It is concluded that a critical moderator for exhibition of the primacy effect is task complexity, presumably because it interferes with initial hypothesis development.

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Author information

Author/s: Marsh, Jessecae K (JK); Ahn, Woo-Kyoung (WK);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Yale University, 2 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven, CT 06511, USA. jessecae.marsh(-atsign-)yale.edu

Grants: R01-MH57737 (Agency:NIMH NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Journal: Memory & cognition (Mem Cognit), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-Apr; vol 34 (issue 3) : pp 568-76

Dates: Created 2006/08/28; Completed 2006/09/21; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 16933766, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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