Competence and performance in causal learning

228 WALDMANN AND WALKER
increase the likelihood that an associative mechanism
with its built-in mechanism of cue competition would
take over.
In our view, the most promising general approach to
the psychology of causality is the research strategy most
linguists choose for the analysis of language (Chomsky,
1965). We should start with models that describe our
competence before we deal with conditions that prevent
people from displaying their competence. If we want to
learn about our language faculty, then we should give
participants the opportunity to show what they can do.
Later we can study errors people make under different
conditions. Similarly, it is more informative to explore
what people can do when learning about causal relations
under optimal conditions before we investigate conditions
in which their competence fails. The models describing
competence can then be used to pinpoint potential
break points that cause people to make errors.
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