Research conducted in the Young Cognition Laboratory

My primary lines of research fall into two general categories. The first involves the study of predictive learning and the factors that influence the induction of causality. Our current focus involves the effects of delays, spatial distance, competition, and contingency on the judgment of causality between two physical objects. One of these objects is a possible cause because its action precedes the action of the other. We are examining the precise relationship between the predictability of whether and when the effect will occur and the role of various causal candidates; we are also testing various hypotheses regarding the effects of interventions on improving the accurate induction of causation. This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Some representative papers on this topic include:

• Young, M.E., & Sutherland, S. (2009). The spatiotemporal distinctiveness of direct causation.  Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 16, 729-735. Reprint.
• Young, M.E., & Nguyen, N. (2009).  The problem of delayed causation in a video game: Constant, varied, and filled delays.  Learning and Motivation, 40, 298-312. Reprint.
• Falmier, O., & Young, M.E. (2008).  The impact of perceived animacy on causal judgments. American Journal of Psychology, 121, 473-500.
• Young, M.E., & Falmier, O. (2008).  Color change as a causal agent: Revisited.  American Journal of Psychology, 121, 129-157.
• Young, M.E., & Falmier, O. (2008).  Launching at a distance: The effect of spatial markers. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61, 1356-1370.
• Young, M.E., Beckmann, J.S., & Wasserman, E.A. (2006).  The pigeon’s perception of Michotte’s launching effect.  Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 86, 223-237.
• Young, M.E. , Rogers, E.T., & Beckmann, J.S. (2005). Causal impressions: Predicting when, not just whether.   Memory and Cognition, 33, 320-331.
• Young, M.E., & Wasserman, E.A. (2002). Limited attention and cue order consistency affect predictive learning: A test of two configural models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 28, 484-496.
• Young, M.E., Johnson, J.L., & Wasserman, E.A. (2000). Serial causation: Occasion setting in a causal induction task. Memory and Cognition, 28, 1213-1230. Abstract
• Young, M.E. (1995). On the origin of personal causal theories. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 2, 83-104. Abstract
  
  

The second line of research involves judgments of variability and stimulus attributes correlated with variability. We are interested in identifying the stimulus factors that impact the amount of perceived variability in collections of items (judged variability is known to affect consumer purchases and food consumption). To that end, we have developed a quantitative model describing the relationship between stimulus attributes and judged variability. More recently, we are studying the potential role between stimulus variability and the judged creativity of someone who produced that variability. Some representative papers include:

• Wasserman, E.A., & Young, M.E. (in press).  Same-different discrimination: The keel and backbone of thought and reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes.
• Young, M.E., & Racey, D. (2009).  Judgments of creativity as a function of visual stimulus variability. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 27, 91-109.
• Young, M.E., Wasserman, E.A., & Ellefson, M.R. (2007).  A theory of variability discrimination.  Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 14, 805-822.
• Castro, L., Young, M.E., & Wasserman, E.A. (2007).  Effects of number of items and visual display variability on same-different discrimination behavior.   Memory and Cognition, 34, 1689-1703.
• Wasserman, E.A., Young, M.E., & Cook. R. (2004).  Variability discrimination in humans and animals:  Implications for adaptive action.   American Psychologist, 59, 869–878.
• Young, M.E., & Ellefson, M.R. (2003). The joint contributions of shape and color to variability discrimination. Learning and Motivation, 34, 52-67
• Young, M.E., & Wasserman, E.A. (2002). Detecting variety: What's so special about uniformity? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 131, 131-143.
• Young, M.E. & Wasserman, E.A. (2001). Entropy and variability discrimination. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 27, 278-293.
• Young, M.E., Wasserman, E.A., Hilfers, M.A., & Dalrymple, R.M. (1999). The pigeon's variability discrimination using lists of successively presented visual stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 25, 475-490. Abstract
• Young, M.E. & Wasserman, E.A. (1997). Entropy detection by pigeons: Response to mixed visual displays after same-different discrimination training. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 23, 157-170. Abstract
  

Students in my laboratory are free to pursue a variety of topics that intersect with my areas of expertise. Recent projects have examined categorization based on motion cues (Olga Falmier, Ph.D. dissertation), temporal discrimination (Josh Beckmann, Ph.D. dissertation), the relationship between brain activity and linguistic descriptors of causal events (Roberto Limongi, Ph.D. dissertation), and the multiarmed bandit task (Debbie Racey, Ph.D. dissertation). Current student projects are examining risk taking behavior, impulsivity, and the utilization of expert advice.