Controlled interventions provide the most direct source of information for learning causal effects. In particular, a dose-response curve can be learned by varying the treatment level and observing the corresponding outcomes. However, interventions can be expensive and time-consuming. Observational data, where the treatment is not controlled by a known mechanism, is sometimes available. Under so...

Both observational and physical practices support the acquisition of motor skill knowledge in the form of spatiotemporal coordination patterns. The current experiment examined the extent that observation and physical practice can support the transfer of spatiotemporal knowledge and amplitude knowledge associated with motor skills. Evidence from a multijoint limb task revealed that knowledge abo...

Many objects can be represented as sets of multidimensional points. A common approach to learning from these point sets is to assume that each set is an i.i.d. sample from an unknown underlying distribution, and then estimate the similarities between these distributions. In realistic situations, however, the point sets are often subject to sampling biases due to variable or inconsistent observa...

The temporal co-occurrence of a novel word and a visual referent undoubtedly facilitates establishing the meaning of a word. It is less understood, however, how precisely learners can keep track of the frequencies of these co-occurrences across situations. Observational learning may rely on one or few highly informative exposures (propose-but-verify) or it may be driven by the collection of evi...

As economics modeling moves from super rational decision makers to considering boundedly rational agents, some economic problems deserve a second look. This paper studies the effects of learning on the efficiency of search. Once learning is taken into account, the structure of information flow becomes important. In particular, I highlight the truncated information structure in the search proble...

Field reports suggest that orangutans acquire local traditions by observing neighbouring conspecifics. However, there is little direct evidence of social learning to support this conclusion. The present study investigated whether orangutans would learn a novel foraging method through observation of a conspecific in a diffusion-chain paradigm testing for the spread of the behaviour. A foraging b...

Causal knowledge serves two functions: it allows us to predict future events on the basis of observations and to plan actions. Although associative learning theories traditionally differentiate between learning based on observations (classical conditioning) and learning based on the outcomes of actions (instrumental conditioning), they fail to express the common basis of these two modes of acce...