In the literature on learning, one of the most robust cue competition effects is blocking: the previous learning of a cue-outcome association prevents learning that other cues predict the same outcome if those cues are presented together with the first cue. In this research, we investigated blocking effects in mental state inference. Participants learned to diagnose the internal states of a target person based on the behaviors he displayed. Blocking effects were observed across several studies, such that, when participants had previously learned that a certain behavior predicted a certain internal state, they later failed to learn about the predictive value of other behaviors that were paired with the original behavioral cue. Implications are discussed for cognitive models of learning and cue competition, as well as for the social psychology of mental state inference.

在有关学习的文献中，最强大的提示竞争效应之一是受阻：先前对提示-结果关联的学习阻止了其他提示与第一个提示一起出现时也能预测相同提示的学习。在这项研究中，我们研究了心理状态推断中的阻滞作用。参与者学会了根据目标人的表现来诊断其内部状态。在几项研究中均观察到了阻断作用，因此，当参与者先前得知某种行为预示了某种内部状态时，他们后来便无法了解与原始行为线索相匹配的其他行为的预测价值。讨论了对学习和提示竞争的认知模型的含义，