Abstract
Conceiving of stimuli and responses as causes and effects, and assuming that rats acquire representational models of causal relations from Pavlovian procedures, previous work by causal model theory proponents attempted to train rat subjects to represent stimulus A as a cause of both stimulus B and food. By these assumptions, with formal help from Bayesian networks, self-production of stimulus B should reduce expectation of alternative causes, including stimulus A, and their effects, including food. Reduced feeder-directed responding to stimulus B when self-produced has been taken as evidence for a general causal reasoning capacity among rats involving mental maps of causal relations. Critics have rejoined that response competition can explain these effects. The present research replicates the key effect, but uses continuous and finer-grained measurement of a broader range of behaviours. Behaviours not recorded in previous studies contradict both prior explanations. Even results cited in support of these explanations, when measured in finer detail and continuously over longer periods, show patterns not expected by either view, but supportive of a specific-process approach with attention to motivational factors. Still, the abstract prediction from Bayesian networks holds, providing a potentially complementary normative analysis. Behaviour systems theory provides firmer framing for such theories than representational-map alternatives.
Highlights
Amid oceans of research and theory on learning—sometimes conceived in cause–effect terms, sometimes not—questions about post-learning processing, of the manner theories of causal reasoning concern, have received comparatively little research attention
Following causal model theory (CMT) [2], Blaisdell et al [1] assumed that rats would perceive and represent preceding stimuli in a Pavlovian setting as causes of following stimuli, and integrate multiple Pavlovian associations into representational models of causal relations
Blaisdell et al [1] showed that responding to a conditional stimulus was less when it was self-produced than otherwise, in a way that matches a view of causal reasoning
Summary
Amid oceans of research and theory on learning—sometimes conceived in cause–effect terms, sometimes not—questions about post-learning processing, of the manner theories of causal reasoning concern, have received comparatively little research attention. Following causal model theory (CMT) [2], Blaisdell et al [1] assumed that rats would perceive and represent preceding stimuli in a Pavlovian setting as causes of following stimuli, and integrate multiple Pavlovian associations into representational models of causal relations. With these assumptions, they devised a training procedure to produce in rats the representational model illustrated in figure 1. For one group of subjects, contacting the lever produced the familiar tone stimulus from the training trials These subjects were assumed to quickly come to see the tone as an effect of lever press.
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