Miguel A. Vadillo

Publications (33) View all

• Source

  Available from: Fernando Blanco

  Article: Fighting the illusion of control: How to make use of cue competition and alternative explanations

  Miguel A. Vadillo, Helena Matute, Fernando Blanco
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  ABSTRACT: Misperceptions of causality are at the heart of superstitious thinking and pseudoscience. The main goal of the present work is to show how our knowledge about the mechanisms involved in causal induction can be used to hinder the development of these beliefs. Available evidence shows that people sometimes perceive causal relationships that do not really exist. We suggest that this might be partly due to their failing to take into account alternative factors that might be playing an important causal role. The present experiment shows that providing accurate and difficult-to-ignore information about other candidate causes can be a good strategy for reducing misattributions of causality, such as illusions of control.
  Universitas Psychologica 05/2013; 12(1):261-270. · 0.40 Impact Factor
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  Available from: David Luque

  Article: The role of outcome inhibition in interference between outcomes: A contingency-learning analogue of retrieval-induced forgetting.

  Miguel A Vadillo, Cristina Orgaz, David Luque, Pedro L Cobos, Francisco J López, Helena Matute
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  ABSTRACT: Current associative theories of contingency learning assume that inhibitory learning plays a part in the interference between outcomes. However, it is unclear whether this inhibitory learning results in the inhibition of the outcome representation or whether it simply counteracts previous excitatory learning so that the outcome representation is neither activated nor inhibited. Additionally, these models tend to conceptualize inhibition as a relatively transient and cue-dependent state. However, research on retrieval-induced forgetting suggests that the inhibition of representations is a real process that can be relatively independent of the retrieval cue used to access the inhibited information. Consistent with this alternative view, we found that interference between outcomes reduces the retrievability of the target outcome even when the outcome is associated with a novel (non-inhibitory) cue. This result has important theoretical implications for associative models of interference and shows that the empirical facts and theories developed in studies of retrieval-induced forgetting might be relevant in contingency learning and vice versa.
  British Journal of Psychology 05/2013; 104(2):167-80. · 2.37 Impact Factor
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  Available from: Fernando Blanco

  Article: Interactive effects of the probability of the cue and the probability of the outcome on the overestimation of null contingency.

  Fernando Blanco, Helena Matute, Miguel A Vadillo
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  ABSTRACT: Overestimations of null contingencies between a cue, C, and an outcome, O, are widely reported effects that can arise for multiple reasons. For instance, a high probability of the cue, P(C), and a high probability of the outcome, P(O), are conditions that promote such overestimations. In two experiments, participants were asked to judge the contingency between a cue and an outcome. Both P(C) and P(O) were given extreme values (high and low) in a factorial design, while maintaining the contingency between the two events at zero. While we were able to observe main effects of the probability of each event, our experiments showed that the cue- and outcome-density biases interacted such that a high probability of the two stimuli enhanced the overestimation beyond the effects observed when only one of the two events was frequent. This evidence can be used to better understand certain societal issues, such as belief in pseudoscience, that can be the result of overestimations of null contingencies in high-P(C) or high-P(O) situations.
  Learning & Behavior 03/2013; · 2.00 Impact Factor
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  Available from: Miguel A. Vadillo

  Article: Evidence for an illusion of causality when using the Implicit Association Test to measure learning

  Miguel A. Vadillo, Jan de Houwer, Maarten de Schryver, Nerea Ortega-Castro, Helena Matute
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  ABSTRACT: Our ability to detect causal relations and patterns of covariation is easily biased by a number of well-known factors. For example, people tend to overestimate the strength of the relation between a cue and an outcome if the outcome tends to occur very frequently. During the last years, several accounts have attempted to explain the outcome-density bias. On the one hand, dual-process performance accounts propose that biases are not due to the way associations are encoded, but to the higher-order cognitive processes involved in the retrieval and use of this information. In other words, the outcome-density bias is seen as a performance effect, not a learning effect. From this point of view, it is predicted that the outcome-density bias should be absent in any testing procedure that reduces the motivation or opportunity to engage in higher-order cognitive processes. Contrary to this prediction, but consistent with the most common single-process learning accounts, our results show that the outcome-density effect can be detected when the Implicit Association Test is used to measure the strength of cue-outcome associations. Keywords: outcome-density effect; contingency learning; causal learning; implicit association test.
  Learning and Motivation 01/2013; · 0.96 Impact Factor
• Source

  Available from: Nerea Ortega-Castro

  Article: Retrieval-induced forgetting and interference between cues: Training a cue–outcome association attenuates retrieval by alternative cues

  Nerea Ortega-Castro, Miguel A Vadillo
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  ABSTRACT: a b s t r a c t Some researchers have attempted to determine whether situations in which a single cue is paired with several outcomes (A–B, A–C interference or interference between outcomes) involve the same learning and retrieval mechanisms as situations in which several cues are paired with a single outcome (A–B, C–B interference or interference between cues). Interestingly, current research on a related effect, which is known as retrieval-induced forgetting, can illuminate this debate. Most retrieval-induced forgetting experiments are based on an experimental design that closely resembles the A–B, A–C interference paradigm. In the present experiment, we found that a similar effect may be observed when items are rearranged such that the general structure of the task more closely resembles the A–B, C–B interference paradigm. This result suggests that, as claimed by other researchers in the area of contingency learning, the two types of interference, namely A–B, A–C and A–B, C–B interference, may share some basic mecha-nisms. Moreover, the type of inhibitory processes assumed to underlie retrieval-induced forgetting may also play a role in these phenomena.
  Behavioural Processes 01/2013; 94:19-25. · 1.65 Impact Factor