Dogs' looking times and pupil dilation response reveal expectations about contact causality

Contact causality is one of the fundamental principles allowing us to make sense of our physical environment. From an early age, humans perceive spatio-temporally contiguous launching events as causal. Surprisingly little is known about causal perception in non-human animals, particularly outside the primate order. Violation-of-expectation paradigms in combination with eye-tracking and pupillometry have been used to study physical expectations in human infants. In the current study, we establish this approach for dogs ( Canis familiaris ). We presented dogs with realistic three-dimensional animations of launching events with contact (regular launching event) or without contact between the involved objects. In both conditions, the objects moved with the same timing and kinematic properties. The dogs tracked the object movements closely throughout the study but their pupils were larger in the no-contact condition and they looked longer at the object initiating the launch after the no-contact event compared to the contact event. We conclude that dogs have implicit expectations about contact causality.

Social representations of the coronavirus and causal perception of its origin: The role of reasons for fear

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic (between 26 March and 2 April 2020), we analysed ( n = 1144) the social representations of the coronavirus and the differentiated perceptions according to the origins attributed to the appearance of the virus (Human vs Non-Human and Intentional vs Unintentional) in a French population. The results show that the social representation is organized around five potentially central descriptive, anxiety-provoking and globally negative elements. But death and contagion are the only stable and structuring elements. The other elements vary according to the reason attributed to the object of fear. Depending on how individuals attribute the origin of the virus, social representations of it vary not only in terms of their content but also in terms of their structure. These results indicate how important it is to consider the perceptions that individuals share about the human (vs non-human) and intentional (vs unintentional) origin of an object of fear in the analysis of their representation of that object.

Social representations of the Coronavirus and causal perception of its origin. The role of reasons for fear.

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic (between 26 March and 2 April 2020), we analysed (n=1144) the social representations of the coronavirus and the differentiated perceptions according to the origins attributed to the appearance of the virus (Human vs Non-Human and Intentional vs. Unintentional) in a French population. The results show that the social representation is organized around five potentially central descriptive, anxiety-provoking and globally negative elements. But death and contagion are the only stable and structuring elements. The other elements vary according to the reason attributed to the object of fear. Depending on how individuals attribute the origin of the virus, social representations of it vary not only in terms of their content but also in terms of their structure. These results indicate how important it is to consider the perceptions that individuals share about the human (vs. non-human) and intentional (vs. unintentional) origin of an object of fear in the analysis of their representation of that object.

Causal Perception in Question-Answering Systems

Root cause analysis is a common data analysis task. While question-answering systems enable people to easily articulate a why question (e.g., why students in Massachusetts have high ACT Math scores on average) and obtain an answer, these systems often produce questionable causal claims. To investigate how such claims might mislead users, we conducted two crowdsourced experiments to study the impact of showing different information on user perceptions of a question-answering system. We found that in a system that occasionally provided unreasonable responses, showing a scatterplot increased the plausibility of unreasonable causal claims. Also, simply warning participants that correlation is not causation seemed to lead participants to accept reasonable causal claims more cautiously. We observed a strong tendency among participants to associate correlation with causation. Yet, the warning appeared to reduce the tendency. Grounded in the findings, we propose ways to reduce the illusion of causality when using question-answering systems.

Causal perception is central in electromagnetic hypersensitivity - a commentary on “Electromagnetic hypersensitivity: a critical review of explanatory hypotheses’’

We highly welcome and appreciate the paper of Dieudonné, 2020 (10.1186/s12940-020-00602-0) on the important but frequently neglected topic of hypersensitivity towards electromagnetic fields (EHS). We agree with the author that the electromagnetic hypothesis (that EHS is caused by exposure to electromagnetic fields) appears scientifically largely unfounded and that other theoretical approaches focussing on psychological processes are more plausible and promising. In the view of the author, two such approaches exist, namely a “cognitive hypothesis” (derived from the comprehensive model by Van den Bergh et al., 2017) and an “attributive hypothesis” as suggested by the author. In this commentary, we want to argue (a) that the distinction between the cognitive and the attributive hypothesis is inaccurate at the conceptual level; (b) that the distinction is also misleading at the mechanistic level, due to an incorrect interpretation of the evidence related to the cognitive hypothesis; and (c) that, by using the term “cognitive hypothesis”, the existing comprehensive model is inappropriately narrowed down without fully appreciating its explanatory power for the phenomena subsumed under both the cognitive and attributive hypothesis. Therefore, the original term “comprehensive model” should be used rather than the label “cognitive hypothesis”.

Speed Overestimation of the Moving Away Object in the Intentional Reaction Causal Effect

We describe a new illusory speed effect arising in visual events developed by Michotte (1946/1963 ) in studies of causal perception and, more specifically, within the so-called intentional reaction effect: When an Object B is seen intentionally escaping from another Object A, its perceived speed is overestimated. In Experiment 1, we used two-alternative forced choice comparisons to estimate perceived speed scale values for a small square moving either alone or in different contexts known to elicit different impressions of animacy ( Parovel et al., 2018 ). The results showed that B’s speed was overestimated only in the condition in which it moved away from another approaching square moving in a nonrigid way, like a caterpillar. In Experiment 2, we psychophysically measured the magnitude of speed overestimation in that condition and tested whether it could be affected by further animacy cues related to the escaping object (the actual velocity of the square) and to the approaching square (its type of motion: caterpillar or linear). Results confirmed that B’s speed was overestimated up to 10% and that the degree of overestimation was affected by both experimental factors, being greater at higher speeds and when the chasing object moved in an animate fashion. This speed bias might be related to a higher sensitivity of the visual processes to threat-related events such as fighting and chasing, leading to evolutionary adaptive behaviours such as speedy flight from predators, but also empathy and emotion understanding.