ABSTRACT
Contrasting associative and contingency based explanations of adult causal judgment, we derived three new predictions from the power PC theory (Cheng, 1997) concerning the role of compound cues, and we tested them in a context in which an effect could be produced by independent cues considered only as possible causes and not as enabling conditions. The first prediction, independence from the compound, was confirmed, and corroborated the theory. The second and third prediction, concerning the irrelevance of, and the equalization to a compound cue, were falsified by the experimental results. These findings suggest the existence of important factors determining causal judgements that lie beyond the scope of power PC theory.
