The influence of causal connections between symptoms on the diagnosis of mental disorders: evidence from online and offline measures.

An experiment conducted with students and experienced clinicians demonstrated very fast and online causal reasoning in the diagnosis of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) mental disorders. The experiment also demonstrated that clinicians' causal reasoning is triggered by information that is directly related to the causal structure that explains the symptoms, such as their temporal sequence. The use of causal theories was measured through explicit, verbal diagnostic judgments and through the online registration of participants' reading times of clinical reports. To detect both online and offline causal reasoning, the consistency of clinical reports was manipulated. This manipulation was made by varying the temporal order in which different symptoms developed in hypothetical clients, and by providing explicit information about causal connections between symptoms. The temporal order of symptoms affected the clinicians' but not the students' reading times. However, offline diagnostic judgments in both groups were influenced by the consistency manipulation. Overall, our results suggest that clinicians engage in fast and online causal reasoning processes when dealing with diagnostic information concerning mental disorders, and that both clinicians and students engage in causal reasoning in diagnostic judgment tasks.

Renewal effects in interference between outcomes as measured by a cued response reaction time task: further evidence for associative retrieval models.

Two experiments demonstrated renewal effects in interference between outcomes in human participants. Experiment 1 revealed a XYX renewal effect, whereas Experiment 2 showed a XYZ renewal effect. The results from both experiments conformed to Bouton's (1993) theory of interference and recovery from interference, and contradicted the predictions derived from alternative accounts. Unlike previous demonstration of renewal effects, a cued response reaction time (RT) task was used, able to detect the effects of fast retrieval processes based on associative activation and that allowed little impact of inferential reasoning.

Interference between outcomes, spontaneous recovery, and context effects as measured by a cued response reaction time task: evidence for associative retrieval models.

The most common associative explanation of interference is based on a retrieval failure. Retrieval, in turn, is considered as the result of an associative activation mechanism that is thought to be fast and automatic. However, up-to-date, there is no evidence of interference based on dependent measures specifically related to this kind of low level processes. The objective of the present study was to test whether interference phenomena can be observed by using a cued response task designed to detect low level retrieval processes. Experiment 1 evaluated whether the cued response task served to show a priming effect. Such effect allowed us to interpret the results found in the remaining experiments of the series. Experiment 2 aimed to find the interference effect by using the cued response task. Experiments 3 and 4 were conducted to assess whether spontaneous recovery and context-change effects could also be observed. The results showed that interference and recovery from interference phenomena can be attributable to fast retrieval processes, which is consistent with associative accounts of interference.