Journal of Psychology & Behavioral Science

Learning by Seeing Before Learning by Doing: The Role of Observation and Intervention in Learning Direct and Inverse Relationships
Amanda M. Kelley, Chris P. Long

Abstract
Identification of relationships in the environment is an essential skill. Arguably, the most common sequence through which learning occurs is passive observation followed by some form of active intervention. We present a set of two experiments evaluating the role of relationship type in causal judgment following a sequence of observation and intervention tasks and a third experiment comparing judgments made from observation to those from intervention tasks. The results show that ratings of generative relationships differed from those of inhibitory and unrelated samples whereas the ratings of inhibitory and unrelated samples did not differ from each other. Also, the findings show that final judgments are reflective of both observation and intervention task data when positively correlated data but not negatively correlated data is presented in the observation task. These findings suggest that generative relationships are more readily apparent whereas inhibitory relationships are more difficult to detect.

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