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r/AcademicPsychology•
MuMuMuMuMu

Help finding a relevant publication about causation

Dear AcademicPsychology redditors,

I'm a linguist searching for relevant (if there are some and, obviously, even better if they are not too old) publications about causation (language independent).

What I'm looking for may be something these lines:

  • How do we process causation (CAUSE and EFFECT) ?
  • Is the our understanding of causation an inherent cognitive ability/process?
  • Is it universal?

I'm actually interested in any psychological/neurological studies dealing with these or similar questions to try to link 'causation in language' with 'understanding of causation as a cognitive, language independent, process'.

Thanks a lot in advance for your time and suggestions.

PS: I hope it's clear what I meant. If not, by all means, ask me. Since I'm pretty alien to psychology I'm not good in putting what I mean into the correct words.

Posted May 8, 2012, 12:51 PM UTC

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RoJo_sonof_DoJo•

The Illusion of Conscious Will is my go-to book when looking for interesting examples of an individual's perception of causality, particularly in terms of what causes behavior.

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MuMuMuMuMuOP•

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely look into it.

It's actually even available at my University's library. What a lucky finding :)

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br4in5•

This article by Marcel Just at Carnegie Mellon sounds along the lines of what you're looking for. It describes a cortical network involved in causal inference based on language processing. If nothing else, read through their citations, which will lead you to other related papers.

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MuMuMuMuMuOP•

Thanks! This looks exactly like what I'm looking for.

PS: I'm amazed, psych-papers look even less reader-friendly than the ones from linguistics. I'm amazed that such a feat is possible.

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toomuchpizza•

I'd recommend checking out Alison Gopnik's work on causal learning. A book she co-edited might be helpful for you. [Causal Learning: Psychology, Philosophy, and Computation] (http://www.amazon.com/Causal-Learning-Psychology-Computation-Development/dp/0195176804/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232963051&sr=8-3)

in particular, there are two chapters relating intuitive theories of causality with causal grammars - both free online: [chapter 1] (http://cocosci.berkeley.edu/tom/papers/tgn-grammar.pdf) and [chapter 2] (http://cocosci.berkeley.edu/tom/papers/gt-grammar.pdf)

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MuMuMuMuMuOP•

Perfect! Thanks a lot.

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