The Causal Sampler: A Sampling Approach to Causal Representation, Reasoning and Learning

Zachary J. Davis, Bob Rehder

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Although the causal graphical model framework has achieved success accounting for numerous causal-based judgments, a key property of these models, the Markov condition, is consistently violated (Rehder, 2014; Rehder & Davis, 2016). A new process model-the causal sampler-accounts for these effects in a psychologically plausible manner by assuming that people construct their causal representations using the Metropolis-Hastings sampling algorithm constrained to only a small number of samples (e.g., < 20). Because it assumes that Markov violations are built into people's causal representations, the causal sampler accounts for the fact that those violations manifest themselves in multiple tasks (both causal reasoning and learning). This prediction was corroborated by a new experiment that directly measured people's causal representations.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
Subtitle of host publicationComputational Foundations of Cognition
PublisherThe Cognitive Science Society
Pages1896-1901
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9780991196760
StatePublished - 2017
Event39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition, CogSci 2017 - London, United Kingdom
Duration: Jul 26 2017Jul 29 2017

Publication series

NameCogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition

Conference

Conference39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition, CogSci 2017
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityLondon
Period7/26/177/29/17

Keywords

  • causal learning
  • causal reasoning
  • sampling

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

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