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Autori principali: Bahr, Nikolai, Zetzsche, Christoph, Maldonado, Jaime, Schill, Kerstin
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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Accesso online:https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.16440
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author Bahr, Nikolai
Zetzsche, Christoph
Maldonado, Jaime
Schill, Kerstin
author_facet Bahr, Nikolai
Zetzsche, Christoph
Maldonado, Jaime
Schill, Kerstin
contents We conducted an exploratory study in virtual reality to examine if people can discover causal relations in a realistic sensorimotor context and how such learning is represented at different processing levels (conscious-cognitive vs. sensorimotor). Additionally, we explored the relation between human causal learning and state-of-the-art causal discovery algorithms. The task consisted of placing a glass on a surface, that breaks if the contact force exeeded its breakability threshold, determined by weight and color. Ecological validity was enhanced by haptic rendering simulating weight and contact forces. Participants were asked to repeatedly transport and place glasses of varying weights and colors on a surface without breaking them. For success, participants had to discover the underlying causal structure. The trials were conducted over three sessions, reflecting naive, exploratory, consolidated and causally aware behavior, with questionnaires assessing conscious causal understanding of the task's causal structure. Sensorimotor representations were inferred by applying causal-discovery algorithms (PC, FCI, FGES) to the recorded trial-by-trial variables, and conditional mutual information was used to quantify the strength of causal influence on the sensorimotor level. Results show that (i) participants identified the weight-breakability link (76% correct after experiment) and the color-breakability link (43%) but struggle to infer causal direction. (ii) Sensorimotor analysis revealed a robust weight-force coupling increasing across sessions, whereas for color-force it was weak and noisy, yet mutual information indicated an attempted learning. (iii) Discovery algorithms recovered the causal structure across sessions. Together, these findings indicate that humans can, partially, perceive the causal structure of the task, with partially dissociated conscious and sensorimotor representations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_16440
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cause-effect perception in an object place task
Bahr, Nikolai
Zetzsche, Christoph
Maldonado, Jaime
Schill, Kerstin
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
We conducted an exploratory study in virtual reality to examine if people can discover causal relations in a realistic sensorimotor context and how such learning is represented at different processing levels (conscious-cognitive vs. sensorimotor). Additionally, we explored the relation between human causal learning and state-of-the-art causal discovery algorithms. The task consisted of placing a glass on a surface, that breaks if the contact force exeeded its breakability threshold, determined by weight and color. Ecological validity was enhanced by haptic rendering simulating weight and contact forces. Participants were asked to repeatedly transport and place glasses of varying weights and colors on a surface without breaking them. For success, participants had to discover the underlying causal structure. The trials were conducted over three sessions, reflecting naive, exploratory, consolidated and causally aware behavior, with questionnaires assessing conscious causal understanding of the task's causal structure. Sensorimotor representations were inferred by applying causal-discovery algorithms (PC, FCI, FGES) to the recorded trial-by-trial variables, and conditional mutual information was used to quantify the strength of causal influence on the sensorimotor level. Results show that (i) participants identified the weight-breakability link (76% correct after experiment) and the color-breakability link (43%) but struggle to infer causal direction. (ii) Sensorimotor analysis revealed a robust weight-force coupling increasing across sessions, whereas for color-force it was weak and noisy, yet mutual information indicated an attempted learning. (iii) Discovery algorithms recovered the causal structure across sessions. Together, these findings indicate that humans can, partially, perceive the causal structure of the task, with partially dissociated conscious and sensorimotor representations.
title Cause-effect perception in an object place task
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.16440