The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences Advance Access originally published online on March 18, 2009
The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 2009 64B(3):315-323; doi:10.1093/geronb/gbp004
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The Role of Contingency and Contiguity in Young and Older Adults’ Causal Learning
1 Department of Psychology, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green
2 Department of Psychology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
Address correspondence to Sharon A., Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Western Kentucky University, 1906 College Heights Boulevard, #21030, Bowling Green, KY 42101. Email: sharon.mutter{at}wku.edu
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Abstract |
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Contingency and temporal contiguity are important "cues to causality." In this study, we examined how aging influences the use of this information in response–outcome causal learning. Young and older adults judged a generative causal contingency (i.e., outcome is more likely when a response is made) to be stronger when response and outcome were contiguous than when the outcome was delayed. Contiguity had a similar beneficial effect on young adults’ preventative causal learning (i.e., outcome is less likely when a response is made). However, older adults did not judge the preventative relationship to be stronger when the response and outcome were separated by a short delay or when the outcome immediately followed their response. These findings point to a fundamental age-related decline in the acquisition of preventative causal contingencies that may be due to changes in the utilization of cues for the retrieval of absent events.
Key Words: Associative processes • Causal learning • Cue utilization • Temporal context
Received April 14, 2008; Accepted December 20, 2008