Fluency, the subjective experience of ease associated with information processing, has been shown to affect a host of judgments. Previous research has typically focused on specific factors that affect the use of a single, specific fluency source. In the present study we examine how cognitive mindsets, or processing modes, moderate fluency…

Individuals have difficulty changing their causal beliefs in light of contradictory evidence. We hypothesized that this difficulty arises because people facing implausible causes give greater consideration to causal alternatives, which, because of their use of a positive test strategy, leads to differential weighting of contingency evidence.…

The present study employed dynamic causal modeling to investigate the effective functional connectivity between regions of the neural network involved in top-down letter processing. We used an illusory letter detection paradigm in which participants detected letters while viewing pure noise images. When participants detected letters, the response…

Both philosophers and psychologists have argued for the existence of distinct kinds of explanations, including teleological explanations that cite functions or goals, and mechanistic explanations that cite causal mechanisms. Theories of causation, in contrast, have generally been unitary, with dominant theories focusing either on counterfactual…

The functional link between genetic alteration and behavioral end-state is rarely straightforward and never linear. Cases where neurodevlopmental conditions defined by a distinct genetic etiology share behavioral phenotypes are exemplary, as is the case for autism and Fragile X Syndrome (FXS). In this paper and its companion paper, we propose a…

The purpose of this study is to explain constructed theoretical models that organizational cynicism perceptions of primary school teachers affect school culture and academic achievement, by using structural equation modeling. With the assumption that there is a cause-effect relationship between three main variables, the study was constructed with…

Background: Both achievement goals and study processing strategies theories have been shown to contribute to the prediction of students' academic performance. Existing research studies (Fenollar, Roman, & Cuestas, 2007; Liem, Lau, & Nie, 2008; Simons, Dewitte, & Lens, 2004) amalgamating these two theoretical orientations in different causal models…

We have previously described (see companion paper, this issue) the utility of using perceptual signatures for defining and dissociating condition-specific neural functioning underlying early visual processes in autism and FXS. These perceptually-driven hypotheses are based on differential performance evidenced only at the earliest stages of visual…

According to cognitive information processing theory, career thoughts mediate the relationship between career and life stress and the ensuing career decision state. Using a sample of 232 college students and structural equation modeling, this study found that an increase in career and life stress was associated with an increase in negative career…

Cognitive biases have been theorized to play a critical role in the onset and maintenance of anxiety and depression. Cognitive bias modification (CBM), an experimental paradigm that uses training to induce maladaptive or adaptive cognitive biases, was developed to test these causal models. Although CBM has generated considerable interest in the…

The role of causal beliefs in people's decisions when faced with economic problems was investigated. Two experiments are reported that vary the causal structure in prisoner's dilemma-like economic situations. We measured willingness to cooperate or defect and collected justifications and think-aloud protocols to examine the strategies that people…

Participants learned about novel artifacts that were created for function X, but later used for function Y. When asked to rate the extent to which X and Y were a given artifact's function, participants consistently rated X higher than Y. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were also asked to rate artifacts' efficiency to perform X and Y. This…

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of theory of mind competence in inference processing in adolescents with Asperger syndrome (AS). We sought to pinpoint the level at which AS individuals experience difficulty drawing inferences and identify the factors that account for their inference-drawing problems. We hypothesized that this…

Computational models of analogy have assumed that the strength of an inductive inference about the target is based directly on similarity of the analogs and in particular on shared higher order relations. In contrast, work in philosophy of science suggests that analogical inference is also guided by causal models of the source and target. In 3…

Children are selective and flexible imitators. They combine their own prior experiences and the perceived causal efficacy of the model to determine whether and what to imitate. In Experiment 1, children were randomly assigned to have either a difficult or an easy experience achieving a goal. They then saw an adult use novel means to achieve the…