28th International Congress of Psychology August 8 ... - U-netSURF

etween X and Y and the contingency between Y and Z. I present experiments demonstrating that
people follow this product rule.
2041.4 The deductive nature of causal induction, P. Cheng, University of California, Los
Angeles, CA, USA
People are capable of answering various causal questions flexibly and coherently. This paper
reports two experiments showing that the outcome density bias, a robust finding, is due to a
misperception of the input. A third experiment shows that results that appear to fit no plausible
rational model are due to subjects interpreting a causal question under two different contexts. They
may also be due to subjects assessing their confidence in whether a relation is causal rather than
the strength of the relation, as supported by a fourth experiment. Representing hypothesized causal
relations explicitly allows a coherent formulation of people's answers.
2041.5 Blocking in serial compound stimuli: The role of temporal spacing in causal model
induction, M.J. Buehner 1 , Y. Hagmayer 2 , 1 Cardiff University, Wales, UK; 2 University of
Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
“Blocking” refers to decreased causal attribution to a redundant cue R, when presented in
compound with a previously established predictor P. Although PR is always followed by the effect,
participants usually attribute more causal strength to P than R. So far, causal induction research
has only considered simultaneous compounds, where both cues occur concurrently. Our
experiments involved serial compounds. P and E were always separated by a 3.8s gap, R either
occurred concurrently with P, concurrently with E, or in the middle of the P-E gap. Results
showed that different temporal spacing can enhance, inhibit and reverse blocking.
2042 INVITED SYMPOSIUM
Chinese character processing and the brain
Convener and Chair: B. Weekes, UK
Co-convener: X.C. Weng, China
2042.1 The plastic changes on speed readers: An fMRI study, D.L. Peng 1 , D. Xu 2 , Z. Jin 1 , G.S.
Ding 1 , Q. Luo 1 , 1 Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China; 2 Beijing 306 Hospital, China
The study was designed to investigate the neural mechanisms of speed-reading by comparing
speed-readers and normal readers with normal pace, as well as by comparing speed-reading and
normal reading with speed-readers. The results showed that there was a significant difference
between speed-readers and untrained readers during their normal pace reading in the frontal cortex
and the parietal cortex, but no significant difference between speed and normal pace reading by
speed-readers. These results could be due to that speed reading training might have led to
functional plastic changes in some brain areas of speed-readers.
2042.2 The triangle model of reading and the "division of labor" in different writing systems, M.
Seidenberg 1 , J.D. Zevin 2 , 1 University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA; 2 Cornell University,
New York, NY, USA
The triangle model of reading (Harm & Seidenberg, Psy. Rev., in press) addresses the use of visual
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