{"pk":27344,"title":"Estimating Causal Power between Binary Cause and Continuous Outcome","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Previous studies of causal learning heavily focused on binary\noutcomes; little is known about causal learning with\ncontinuous outcomes. The present paper proposes a\nqualitative extension of the causal power theory to the\nsituation where a binary cause influences a continuous effect,\nand induces causal power under various ceiling situations\nwith the continuous outcomes. To test the predictions, we\nsystematically manipulated the type of outcome (continuous\nvs. percentage vs. binary) and the contingency information.\nThe experiment shows that people estimate causal strength\nbased on the linear-sum rule for continuous outcomes and the\nnoisy-OR rule for binary outcomes. In the partial ceiling\nsituation where causal power is partially inferred but not\nprecisely estimated, the distribution of participants’\njudgments was bimodal with one mode at the minimum value\nand the other at the maximum value, suggesting some\nparticipants made conservative estimates while others made\noptimistic estimates. These results are generally consistent\nwith the predictions of the causal power theory. Theoretical\nimplications and future directions are discussed.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"causal reasoning; causal inference; causal power;\ncontinuous variable; integration rules."}],"section":"Posters: Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2kj8k4xq","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Motoyuki","middle_name":"","last_name":"Saito","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, Los Angeles","department":""},{"first_name":"Patricia","middle_name":"W.","last_name":"Cheng","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, Los Angeles","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2017-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/27344/galley/16980/download/"}]}