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Background: We have previously presented two educational interventions aimed to diminish causal illusions and promote critical thinking. In both cases, these interventions reduced causal illusions developed in response to active contingency learning tasks, in which participants were able to decide whether to introduce the potential cause in each of the learning trials. The reduction of causal judgments appeared to be influenced by differences in the frequency with which the participants decided to apply the potential cause, hence indicating that the intervention affected their information sampling strategies. Objective: In the present study, we investigated whether one of these interventions also reduces causal illusions when covariation information is acquired passively. Method: Forty-one psychology undergraduates received our debiasing intervention, while 31 students were assigned to a control condition. All participants completed a passive contingency learning task. Results: We found weaker causal illusions in students that participated in the debiasing intervention, compared to the control group. Conclusion: The intervention affects not only the way the participants look for new evidence, but also the way they interpret given information. Teaching implications: Our data extending previous results regarding evidence-based educational interventions aimed to promote critical thinking to situations in which we act as mere observers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Las estrategias que emplean los aprendices lectores dependen en buena medida de la consistencia de los sistemas ortográficos pues, mientras en las ortografías transparentes los aprendices se basan más en estrategias subléxicas, en las opacas tienen que recurrir a un uso flexible de estrategias de tipo subléxico y léxico. No obstante, algunas investigaciones recientes en ortografías transparentes han destacado el uso de estrategias léxicas ya en las primeras fases del aprendizaje. El objetivo de este artículo fue determinar si los aprendices españoles emplean diferentes estrategias en las primeras etapas o mantienen únicamente una lectura subléxica basada en las reglas de conversión grafema-fonema. Para ello se aplicó un diseño basado en bloques a una muestra de 37 alumnos de 7 y 9 años de edad en una tarea de lectura de palabras. Los análisis de modelos lineales de efectos mixtos mostraron un efecto de cambio de estrategia ya a los 7 años. Se confirma así que desde las primeras etapas los aprendices de ortografías transparentes también emplean la vía léxica y recurren a la flexibilidad en el uso de estrategias. Se discuten las consecuencias de los resultados en la concepción del aprendizaje de las ortografías transparentes.Strategies used by reading learners depend largely on the consistency of orthographic systems. Thus, whereas learners of languages with transparent orthographies rely mainly on sublexical strategies, learners of deep orthographic systems have to resort to the use of flexible lexical and sublexical strategies in order to achieve a good command of word recognition. Nevertheless, some recent research on transparent orthography have pointed out that lexical strategies are used from the early stages of learning. The aim of this study was to determine whether learners of Spanish –a transparent language– alternate between different lexical and sublexical strategies, or stick to sublexical reading based on grapheme-phoneme conversion rules only. A block-based reading experiment was conducted with 37 students aged 7 and 9 years. Mixed-effects analyses showed an effect of strategy change even at age 7. We thus confirm that from the first stages, learners of transparent orthographies also employ the lexical route and resort to a flexible use of strategies. The implications of these results in the conception of learning transparent orthographic systems are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]