Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Prior knowledge can affect causal judgments by inducing expectations in learners. One important type of prior knowledge is about domains; for example, physical systems are typically believed to be more deterministic than psychological ones. We examine the role of these types of determinism expectations in shaping subsequent causal judgments, and we argue that they mediate effects of abstract domain-wide expectations. Study 1 shows that expectations of determinism—in particular, of sufficiency—positively predict judgments of strength and sufficiency ratings, even when holding statistical data constant. Study 2 shows that abstract expectations at the domain level affect causal judgments, but these effects are mediated (differently between conditions) by vignette-level expectations of determinism. These results jointly suggest a productive way to conceptualize domain effects on causal judgments, namely as effects of expectations about the causal relations being investigated.