Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Three experiments test the processing of compound predictors in contingency judgments. Participants judged the relation between compound predictors and an outcome, as well as the relation between their constituent elements and the outcome, under different predictor-outcome contingencies. In Experiment 1, the contingency of an AB compound predictor was judged as independent of the contingencies of its elements A and B. In Experiment 2, judgments of a compoimd predictor (ABC) remained similarly unaffected by changes in the contingencies of its elements, even though the similarity between the compound predictor and one of its constituent elements (AC) was high. In Experiment 3, compound predictors were perceived as unique, although the rate of acquisition of an A+, AB- discrimination did not differ from that of an AC+ , ABC- discrimination, contrary to the prediction of Pearce's (1994) contlgural model. Overall, the elemental associative view is rejected in favor of a modified, low generalization, configural model.