Serial causation: Occasion setting in a causal induction task

The temporal relations among candidate causes were studied in a causal indu ction task using a design that is known to produce occasion setting in anim al learning preparations. For some subset of the observations, one event, t he occasion setter, was accompanied by another event, the conditional cause ; for another subset of the observations, the conditional cause occurred al one. The efficacy of the conditional cause depended on whether it was or wa s not accompanied by the occasion setter. Participants used the occasion se tter to modulate their effect expectancy to the conditional cause when the events were presented serially, but not simultaneously. Current causal indu ction models are unable to account for the full range of effects that we ob served; the relative roles of time, attention, and cue distinctiveness are discussed.