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Thinking in a Foreign language reduces the causality bias

The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of a foreign language on the causality bias (i.e., the illusion that two events are causally related when they are not). We predict that using a foreign language could reduce the illusions of causality. A total of 36 native English speakers p...

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Autores principales: Díaz-Lago, Marcos, Matute, Helena
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6295649/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29451106
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1747021818755326
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author Díaz-Lago, Marcos
Matute, Helena
author_facet Díaz-Lago, Marcos
Matute, Helena
author_sort Díaz-Lago, Marcos
collection PubMed
description The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of a foreign language on the causality bias (i.e., the illusion that two events are causally related when they are not). We predict that using a foreign language could reduce the illusions of causality. A total of 36 native English speakers participated in Experiment 1, 80 native Spanish speakers in Experiment 2. They performed a standard contingency learning task, which can be used to detect causal illusions. Participants who performed the task in their native tongue replicated the illusion of causality effect, whereas those performing the task in their foreign language were more accurate in detecting that the two events were causally unrelated. Our results suggest that presenting the information in a foreign language could be used as a strategy to debias individuals against causal illusions, thereby facilitating more accurate judgements and decisions in non-contingent situations. They also contribute to the debate on the nature and underlying mechanisms of the foreign language effect, given that the illusion of causality is rooted in basic associative processes.
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spelling pubmed-62956492018-12-26 Thinking in a Foreign language reduces the causality bias Díaz-Lago, Marcos Matute, Helena Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) Special Issue Articles The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of a foreign language on the causality bias (i.e., the illusion that two events are causally related when they are not). We predict that using a foreign language could reduce the illusions of causality. A total of 36 native English speakers participated in Experiment 1, 80 native Spanish speakers in Experiment 2. They performed a standard contingency learning task, which can be used to detect causal illusions. Participants who performed the task in their native tongue replicated the illusion of causality effect, whereas those performing the task in their foreign language were more accurate in detecting that the two events were causally unrelated. Our results suggest that presenting the information in a foreign language could be used as a strategy to debias individuals against causal illusions, thereby facilitating more accurate judgements and decisions in non-contingent situations. They also contribute to the debate on the nature and underlying mechanisms of the foreign language effect, given that the illusion of causality is rooted in basic associative processes. SAGE Publications 2018-02-16 2019-01 /pmc/articles/PMC6295649/ /pubmed/29451106 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1747021818755326 Text en © Experimental Psychology Society 2018 http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Special Issue Articles
Díaz-Lago, Marcos
Matute, Helena
Thinking in a Foreign language reduces the causality bias
title Thinking in a Foreign language reduces the causality bias
title_full Thinking in a Foreign language reduces the causality bias
title_fullStr Thinking in a Foreign language reduces the causality bias
title_full_unstemmed Thinking in a Foreign language reduces the causality bias
title_short Thinking in a Foreign language reduces the causality bias
title_sort thinking in a foreign language reduces the causality bias
topic Special Issue Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6295649/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29451106
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1747021818755326
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