The Relative Effect of Cue Interaction

Abstract

It is well established that two predictor cues (A and B) of a common outcome interact in that the judgement of the relationship between each cue and the outcome is influenced by the pairing history of the other cue with that outcome. For example, when the contingency of A with an outcome is weaker than the contingency of B with that outcome, the rating of the predictiveness of A is reduced relative to a situation where only A is paired with the outcome. One explanation of such cue interaction effects is provided by the conditional ΔP account. Spellman (1996b) derived a counterintuitive prediction of the conditional ΔP account where cue interaction should not occur under certain conditions even though a relatively poor predictor of an outcome is paired with a relatively good predictor of that outcome. However, Spellman (1996b) did not provide data to evaluate this prediction. In the present paper, we report the relevant data and show that they are consistent with the conditional ΔP account. A competing account of cue interaction is provided by the Rescorla-Wagner (RW) model. We derive the predictions of the RW model for the conditions specified by Spellman (1996b), and show that at asymptote the predictions of the RW model are identical to those of the conditional ΔP account.