Designed to establish a causal relationship between childhood victimization and young adults' substance abuse, this study also examined depression's role as mediator in that causal relationship. The study employs child-abuse measures that weigh both the type (sexual, physical) and the persistence of abuse. The study took as its substance-abuse measures the DSM-IV criteria for current alcohol ab...

Much research on elemental causal learning has focused on how causal strength is learned from the states of variables. In longitudinal contexts, the way a cause and effect change over time can be informative of the underlying causal relationship. We propose a framework for inferring the causal strength from different observed transitions, and compare the predictions to existing models of causal...

We examine whether a causal relationship exists between maternal education and maternal mortality. Despite considerable evidence in favour of a causal relationship between education and a range of other health behaviours and outcomes, and a significant gradient between maternal mortality and education across time and countries, no comprehensive study exists to examine whether this relationship ...

The current study examined one way in which people learn complex causal relations from covariation. When participants were presented with covariation information between X and Y and covariation information between Y and Z only, they were willing to infer a causal relationship between X and Z, although it is not warranted by the evidence. Furthermore, the perceived strength of the terminal relat...