Perception Of Causality Research Articles

Causal Pluralism in Philosophy: Empirical Challenges and Alternative Proposals

An increasing number of arguments for causal pluralism invoke empirical psychological data. Different aspects of causal cognition—specifically, causal perception and causal inference—are thought to involve distinct cognitive processes and representations, and they thereby distinctively support transference and dependency theories of causation, respectively. We argue that this dualistic picture of causal concepts arises from methodological differences, rather than from an actual plurality of concepts. Hence, philosophical causal pluralism is not particularly supported by the empirical data. Serious engagement with cognitive science reveals that the connection between psychological concepts of causation and philosophical notions is substantially more complicated than is traditionally presumed.

Dogs' looking times and pupil dilation response reveal expectations about contact causality.

Contact causality is one of the fundamental principles allowing us to make sense of our physical environment. From an early age, humans perceive spatio-temporally contiguous launching events as causal. Surprisingly little is known about causal perception in non-human animals, particularly outside the primate order. Violation-of-expectation paradigms in combination with eye-tracking and pupillometry have been used to study physical expectations in human infants. In the current study, we establish this approach for dogs (Canis familiaris). We presented dogs with realistic three-dimensional animations of launching events with contact (regular launching event) or without contact between the involved objects. In both conditions, the objects moved with the same timing and kinematic properties. The dogs tracked the object movements closely throughout the study but their pupils were larger in the no-contact condition and they looked longer at the object initiating the launch after the no-contact event compared to the contact event. We conclude that dogs have implicit expectations about contact causality.

Evaluation of prosocial actions performed by dynamic shapes at 17 months of age

ABSTRACT This research investigated whether the perception of social-causal relation alone triggers both infants’ evaluation processes and expectations about the social preferences of informed third parties. Three experiments were carried out, using the violation of expectation (VoE) paradigm. During the familiarization phase, infants saw events in which negative interactions involving two spheres as third parties were presented, while another shape intervened (intervening event) or not (non-intervening event), and a bystander watched these interactions. In Experiment 1, a sphere moved towards another sphere that started to move before the contact (social causality); in Experiment 2, a sphere moved towards another sphere that started to move after the contact (physical causality); in Experiment 3, a sphere moved towards fixed objects (physical causality). In the two test trials, either the intervening or the non-intervening agent needed help to enter into a box, and the bystander helped either agent. Later, a manual choice task assessed infants’ preferences. The results demonstrated that only in the social condition infants expected a bystander to help an intervening agent, and preferred the intervening agent. The findings provided evidence that infants’ evaluations are triggered by the perception of social causality.

Examining Parents’ Ways of Coping With Their Children’s Problem Behaviors and Their Perceptions of Causality

This study explored parents' ways of coping with their children's problem behaviors and their perceptions of causality. The study group was composed of 164 children aged 7-12 years (84 females and 80 males) and their parents (120 mothers and 44 fathers). In order to collect data, “General Information Form” for the demographical statistics and “Problem behavior Scale – Coping – Parents Form” and “Problem behavior Scale – Causal Factors – Parents Form” which was developed by Kaner (2007) were used. The study findings revealed that there was no significant difference between he subtest scores of both scales according to children’s sex. Also, mothers use defective coping, negative coping, and preventive coping approaches more than the fathers. Compared to mothers who graduated from high school, mothers who graduated from elementary school and middle school used more effective coping methods while coping with their children’s problem behaviors. Furthermore, compared to mothers who graduated from elementary school and middle school, mothers who graduated from university and above attributed their children’s problem behaviors more to their children’s negative relationships with the people important in their lives. Mothers who graduated from university and above believed that negative socioeconomic conditions of the family were more effective in the causality of their children's problem behaviors compared to mothers who graduated from elementary school and middle school. In addition, fathers with under graduate and higher degrees attributed the causality of their children’s problem behavior to their children’s negative relationships with the people important in their lives compared to fathers who graduated from elementary school and middle school.

"Satanism is witchcraft's younger sibling": Changing perceptions of natural and supernatural anaemia causality in Malawian children.

In countries of sub-Saharan Africa, many children are admitted to hospital with severe forms of anaemia. The late hospital admissions of anaemic children contribute significantly to child morbidity and mortality in these countries. This qualitative study explores local health beliefs and traditional treatment practices that may hinder timely seeking of hospital care for anaemic children. In January of 2019, nine focus group discussions were conducted with 90 participants in rural communities of Malawi. The participants represented four groups of caregivers; mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers of children under the age of five. The Malawian medical landscape is comprised of formal and informal therapeutic alternatives-and this myriad of modalities is likely to complicate the healthcare choices of caregivers. When dealing with child illness, many participants reported how they would follow a step-by-step, 'multi-try' therapeutic pathway where a combination of biomedical and traditional treatment options were sought at varying time points depending on the perceived cause and severity of symptoms. The participants linked anaemia to naturalistic (malaria, poor nutrition and the local illnesses kakozi and kapamba), societal (the local illness msempho) and supernatural or personalistic (witchcraft and Satanism) causes. Most participants agreed that anaemia due to malaria and poor nutrition should be treated at hospital. As for local illnesses, many grandparents suggested herbal treatment offered by traditional healers, while the majority of parents would opt for hospital care. However, participants across all age groups claimed that anaemia caused by witchcraft and Satanism could only be dealt with by traditional healers or prayer, respectively. The multiple theories of anaemia causality combined with extensive use of and trust in traditional and complementary medicine may explain the frequent delay in admittance of anaemic children to hospital.

Social representations of the coronavirus and causal perception of its origin: The role of reasons for fear.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic (between 26 March and 2 April 2020), we analysed (n = 1144) the social representations of the coronavirus and the differentiated perceptions according to the origins attributed to the appearance of the virus (Human vs Non-Human and Intentional vs Unintentional) in a French population. The results show that the social representation is organized around five potentially central descriptive, anxiety-provoking and globally negative elements. But death and contagion are the only stable and structuring elements. The other elements vary according to the reason attributed to the object of fear. Depending on how individuals attribute the origin of the virus, social representations of it vary not only in terms of their content but also in terms of their structure. These results indicate how important it is to consider the perceptions that individuals share about the human (vs non-human) and intentional (vs unintentional) origin of an object of fear in the analysis of their representation of that object.

Exploring the relationships between illness beliefs and psychosis symptoms among Black African and Caribbean people with non-affective psychosis

ABSTRACT Background Black African and Caribbean people in the UK have the highest rates of diagnosis with Psychosis. Compared with other ethnic groups, their contact with mental health services is characterised by inferior access, care experiences, and outcomes. Previous research suggests that beliefs about mental health problems may influence emotional responses, coping behaviours and outcomes in psychosis. Method The study examined the causal attributions and illness perceptions of 51 Black African and Caribbean people with non-affective psychosis and their associations with psychosis symptoms, using the Positive and Negative Syndrome S and the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire. Results Black service users with non-affective psychosis most frequently attributed mental health problems to psychosocial factors, though spiritual, biological and substance abuse explanations were also provided. Endorsing a psychosocial explanation for psychosis was associated with less severe negative symptoms. More negative or threatening illness perceptions were correlated with greater negative, general and overall symptom severity in psychosis. Conclusions Psychological formulations and interventions for Black people experiencing psychosis should consider personalised beliefs about their mental health problems as this may facilitate improvements in symptoms. Further longitudinal research is warranted in larger samples to examine psychological causal mechanisms linking illness beliefs and psychosis outcomes.

SEARCHING FOR SCIENCE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: INSIGHTS FROM CRITICAL REALISM

A serious academic debate in general, let alone on theoretical and methodological issues, is rare for both Western and Russian peer-reviewed journals. In the context of discussion, launched by a polemical article by a prominent Russian IR expert Alexey Fenenko, published in 2018 in the ‘International Trends’ journal, is more important and noteworthy. Nominally both this article and the subsequent responses from Denis Degterev, Igor Istomin, Andrey Baykov and Konstantin Khudoley focused on a long-running dispute between the proponents of quantitative and qualitative methods in IR studies. However, the true essence of this discussion, as well as its implications, goes far beyond a mere technical argument about methods. The present article examines this discussion as well as developments in contemporary IR theory through the lens of critical realism (CR). The first section considers the arguments of the discussants and shows that they tend to focus on secondary, technical issues leaving out the key subject of the dispute, i.e. how should international studies be organized in order to have a right to be called a science. In order to bring this issue back into the spotlight and to provide a new perspective on the issue, the second section considers the problem field of the contemporary IR theory from the viewpoint of CR. According to critical realists all predominant approaches in the mainstream IR theory are rooted in the Humean empiricism which to a large extent explains both epistemological and practical limitations of the contemporary IR studies. As an alternative, they advance the ideas of the founder of critical realism, British philosopher R. Bhaskar. The third section examines the key epistemological and ontological provisions of CR, which include the fundamental recognition of objective reality, existing prior to and beyond human activities, reality, which is stratified and differentiated. They also entail a specific perception of causality and of possible limits of cogniscibility and predictability of social phenomena. Nonetheless the article is far from a straightforward apology of critical realism. The fourth section identifies certain weaknesses of contemporary interpretations of CR in the context of IR theory, which include a static nature of their methodology and inconsistency of their implications. The author concludes that the major contribution of CR to the IR theory lies in providing a clear path for further research – that is development of materialist theories and approaches.

Speed Overestimation of the Moving Away Object in the Intentional Reaction Causal Effect.

We describe a new illusory speed effect arising in visual events developed by Michotte (1946/1963) in studies of causal perception and, more specifically, within the so-called intentional reaction effect: When an Object B is seen intentionally escaping from another Object A, its perceived speed is overestimated. In Experiment 1, we used two-alternative forced choice comparisons to estimate perceived speed scale values for a small square moving either alone or in different contexts known to elicit different impressions of animacy (Parovel et al., 2018). The results showed that B’s speed was overestimated only in the condition in which it moved away from another approaching square moving in a nonrigid way, like a caterpillar. In Experiment 2, we psychophysically measured the magnitude of speed overestimation in that condition and tested whether it could be affected by further animacy cues related to the escaping object (the actual velocity of the square) and to the approaching square (its type of motion: caterpillar or linear). Results confirmed that B’s speed was overestimated up to 10% and that the degree of overestimation was affected by both experimental factors, being greater at higher speeds and when the chasing object moved in an animate fashion. This speed bias might be related to a higher sensitivity of the visual processes to threat-related events such as fighting and chasing, leading to evolutionary adaptive behaviours such as speedy flight from predators, but also empathy and emotion understanding.

Multisensory effects on causal perception

Multisensory effects on causal perception

From causal perception to event segmentation: Using spatial memory to reveal how many visual events are involved in causal launching

From causal perception to event segmentation: Using spatial memory to reveal how many visual events are involved in causal launching

The Causal and Force Perception and Their Perceived Asymmetries in Flight Collisions.

The present study was to investigate causal perception and force perception in ecological objects. Four experiments were designed to compare the perceived causality and force of one of the two objects on the other by changing the property of one or both of the objects involved in the launching effect. Our results support causal asymmetry and force asymmetry, in which the launcher has a greater causal effect and exerts more force on the target. Furthermore, we also found that, the ecological object, which is the airplane in this study, had a greater causal effect and exerted more force, resulting in strengthened asymmetries when the airplane acted as the launcher and weakened asymmetries when the airplane acted as the target. The properties of the object also impacted causal perception by attenuating the effect of the temporal gap on causality. Those results indicate that the airplane is perceived as the main cause for a collision compared with an abstract object. The influence of conceptual knowledge of the object and the sense of agency on changing the degree of perceived causality and force in a particular motion pattern was discussed.

Retinotopic adaptation reveals distinct categories of causal perception

We can perceive not only low-level features of events such as color and motion, but also seemingly higher-level properties such as causality. A prototypical example of causal perception is the ‘launching effect’: one object (A) moves toward a stationary second object (B) until they are adjacent, at which point A stops and B starts moving in the same direction. Beyond these motions themselves — and regardless of any higher-level beliefs — this display induces a vivid visual impression of causality, wherein A is seen to cause B's motion. Do such percepts reflect a unitary category of visual processing, or might there be multiple distinct forms of causal perception? While launching is often simply equated with causal perception, researchers have sometimes described other phenomena such as ‘triggering’ (in which B moves faster than A) and ‘entraining’ (in which A continues to move alongside B). We used psychophysical methods to determine whether these labels really carve visual processing at its joints, and how putatively different forms of causal perception relate to each other. Previous research demonstrated retinotopically specific adaptation to causality: exposure to causal launching makes subsequent ambiguous events in that same location more likely to be seen as non-causal ‘passing’. Here, after replicating this effect, we show that exposure to triggering also yields retinotopically specific adaptation for subsequent ambiguous launching displays, but that exposure to entraining does not. Collectively, these results reveal that visual processing distinguishes some (but not all) types of causal interactions.

Perception of causality and synchrony dissociate in the audiovisual bounce-inducing effect (ABE)

A sound can cause 2 visual streaming objects appear to bounce (the audiovisual bounce-inducing effect, ABE). Here we examined whether the stream/bounce percept affects perception of audiovisual synchrony. Participants saw 2 disks that either clearly streamed, clearly bounced, or were ambiguous, and heard a sound around the point of contact (POC). They reported, on each trial, whether they perceived the disks to ‘stream’ or ‘bounce’, and whether the sound was ‘synchronous’ or ‘asynchronous’ with the POC. Results showed that the optimal time of the sound to induce a bounce was before the POC (−59 msec), whereas audiovisual synchrony was maximal when the sound came after the POC (+16 msec). The range of temporal asynchronies perceived as ‘synchronous’, the temporal binding window (TBW), was wider when disks were perceived as bouncing than streaming, with no difference between ambiguous and non-ambiguous visual displays. These results demonstrate 1) that causality differs from synchrony, 2) that causality widens the TBW, and 3) that the ABE is perceptually real.

Sense of Agency in Multi-Step Actions.

In our daily lives, we frequently execute actions that require several steps to bring about the outcome. However, investigations on how the sense of agency—the sense of controlling our actions and their outcomes—evolves in multi-step actions are still lacking. The purpose of the present research is to fill this gap. In the present study, the participants executed one-step, two-step, and three-step actions in which one, two, or three keys had to be pressed consecutively to generate a tone. We used sensory attenuation as an implicit measure of the sense of agency. Sensory attenuation means that self-produced sensory effects are perceived as less intense than externally generated effects. In the present experiment, sensory attenuation was measured in a psychophysical paradigm and increased in multi-step actions compared to the one-step action. We also asked the participants to explicitly rate the amount to which they felt that they had generated the tone. Ratings were highest in the one-step condition and dropped for multi-step actions, thus showing the opposite pattern of the sensory attenuation data. We assume that enhanced sensory attenuation in multi-step actions could be due to increased effort or more accurate sensorimotor predictions of action effects. The decrease in explicit ratings for multi-step actions might be attributed to reduced perception of causality.

Climate change adaptation in rural South Africa: Using stakeholder narratives to build system dynamics models in data-scarce environments

ABSTRACT The need for innovative systemic approaches for managing water resources that integrate natural and human dimensions is well established. Although systemic, participatory modelling has been shown to support stakeholder involvement and integrated analysis, the uptake within acrimonious, data-scarce contexts – especially in the developing world – is limited. This study details a process designed to address challenges facing the lower Olifants River Catchment in South Africa, including deteriorating water quality, data paucity and stakeholder conflict. Narratives and quantitative data were used to build a system dynamics (SD) model, ResiMod, within a participatory process. The paper demonstrates how narratives can inform, and be informed by, iterative model development whilst integrating scientific data. The approach facilitated an exploration of perceptions of causality, connections between stakeholder sectors, and mitigatory actions for responding to climate-change impacts on biodiversity. This offers a promising approach to support improved communication and learning in disputed, data-scarce contexts.

Causal item of Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (BIPQ) scale: The main categories.

The causal item of illness perception from Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (BIPQ) has no clearly defined response categories. It restricts the comparison of findings across studies on illness perception. Therefore, this study analyzed the causal item responses and proposed a categorization structure. The cohort study measurements were conducted at early cardiac rehabilitation and six months later. Illness perception was assessed using BIPQ scale with qualitative responses of causal item being independently coded by two researchers who assigned the responses to categories using template analysis approach. The study identified seven main causal categories of illness perception: lifestyle, psychological causes, natural causes, working conditions, body changes, environmental factors, and other causes. The perception that acute coronary syndrome is mainly due to lifestyle factors associates with better health-related outcomes compared to other causal perceptions. The proposed categorization of BIPQ causal item could be tested in the future research among different samples accounting only the main cause.

Phenomenal Causality and Sensory Realism.

One of the most important tasks for humans is the attribution of causes and effects in all wakes of life. The first systematical study of visual perception of causality—often referred to as phenomenal causality—was done by Albert Michotte using his now well-known launching events paradigm. Launching events are the seeming collision and seeming transfer of movement between two objects—abstract, featureless stimuli (“objects”) in Michotte’s original experiments. Here, we study the relation between causal ratings for launching events in Michotte’s setting and launching collisions in a photorealistically computer-rendered setting. We presented launching events with differing temporal gaps, the same launching processes with photorealistic billiard balls, as well as photorealistic billiard balls with realistic motion dynamics, that is, an initial rebound of the first ball after collision and a short sliding phase of the second ball due to momentum and friction. We found that providing the normal launching stimulus with realistic visuals led to lower causal ratings, but realistic visuals together with realistic motion dynamics evoked higher ratings. Two-dimensional versus three-dimensional presentation, on the other hand, did not affect phenomenal causality. We discuss our results in terms of intuitive physics as well as cue conflict.

A Psychological Approach to Causal Understanding and the Temporal Asymmetry

This article provides a conceptual account of causal understanding by connecting current psychological research on time and causality with philosophical debates on the causal asymmetry. I argue that causal relations are viewed as asymmetric because they are understood in temporal terms. I investigate evidence from causal learning and reasoning in both children and adults: causal perception, the temporal priority principle, and the use of temporal cues for causal inference. While this account does not suffice for correct inferences of causal structure, I show it to serve as a preliminary understanding of causal concepts as asymmetric, that later incorporates other types of evidence (leading up to difference-making, or causal processes). This approach supplies causal models with an asymmetric concept of causation that underlies hypotheses about causal structure, as I will illustrate from the framework of the knowledge-based causal induction model. I further argue for an integrating perspective, showing how the understanding of causes as preceding their effects underlies both psychological models and philosophical debates over time and the causal asymmetry, particularly regarding problem cases such as simultaneous causation or backwards causation, and the conceptual connection between causation and action.

Causal Reasoning in Multi-Object Interaction on the Traffic Scene: Occlusion-Aware Prediction of Visibility Fluent

Occlusion caused by multi-object interaction makes the traffic scene understanding intractable. In this paper, we focus on predicting the visibility status of vehicle in the framework of causality perception. The visibility fluent is employed to present the varying state of an object, involving visible and occluded. We introduce a probabilistic grammar model, named Hierarchical And-Or Graph (H-AOG), to construct the causal relations between fluents and actions. It consists of a Causal And-Or Graph (C-AOG) module and an Action And-Or Graph (A-AOG) module. An influence field is constructed by the polar coordinate transformation to model interactions in the A-AOG module. This method interprets the occurrence of occlusion due to multi-vehicle interaction. We evaluate our approach on both synthetic data and real data from the KITTI dataset. Compared to the state-of-the-art models like LSTM/GRU, it proves to achieve a promising accuracy in prediction of objects' visibility states and have better generalization on real data.