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Observing the unexpected enhances infants’ learning and exploration
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Given the overwhelming quantity of information available from the environment, how do young learners know what to learn about and what to ignore? We found that 11-month-old infants (N = 110) used violations of prior expectations as special opportunities for learning. The infants were shown events that violated expectations about object behavior or events that were nearly identical but did not violate expectations. The sight of an object that violated expectations enhanced learning and promoted information-seeking behaviors; specifically, infants learned more effectively about objects that committed violations, explored those objects more, and engaged in hypothesis-testing behaviors that reflected the particular kind of violation seen. Thus, early in life, expectancy violations offer a wedge into the problem of what to learn.
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“Thus, before 1 yr of age, infants expect that an unsupported object falls, that an object moving down an inclined plane accelerates, and that an upwardly moving object decelerates, and they are surprised to see artificial violations of these expectations (Kim and Spelke 1992; Stahl and Feigenson 2015).”
BackgroundCaregiver–child interaction influences causal learning and engagement during structured play
Medina, C., & Sobel, D. M. (2019) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104678 · Cited by 47
Sampling to learn words: Adults and children sample words that reduce referential ambiguity
Zettersten, M., & Saffran, J. R. (2020) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/desc.13064 · Cited by 45
The Empirical Child? A Framework for Investigating the Development of Scientific Habits of Mind
Butler, L. P. (2020) · Child Development Perspectives · doi:10.1111/cdep.12354 · Cited by 44
Young Children's Interactions with Objects: Play as Practice and Practice as Play
Lockman, J. J., & Tamis‐LeMonda, C. S. (2021) · Annual Review of Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-devpsych-050720-102538 · Cited by 49
Goudeau, S., & Cimpian, A. (2021) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/1745691620953781 · Cited by 51
“Even infants spend more time exploring objects that behave in surprising ways (e.g., floating in midair; Stahl & Feigenson, 2015), as if they were seeking explanations for these objects’ behavior (see also Baillargeon, 1994).”
BackgroundDevelopment of visual object recognition
Ayzenberg, V., & Behrmann, M. (2023) · Nature Reviews Psychology · doi:10.1038/s44159-023-00266-w · Cited by 41
“These findings are consistent with a growing literature that suggests that infants ‘curate’ their own experience to support visual learning by adjusting where they fixate or how they manipulate objects 175,178,179 .”
Wang, S. (2019) · Cognitive Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2019.05.001 · Cited by 41
Oakes, L. M., & Rakison, D. H. (2019) · doi:10.1093/oso/9780195391893.001.0001 · Cited by 80
Action Prediction Allows Hypothesis Testing via Internal Forward Models at 6 Months of Age
Gredebäck, G., Lindskog, M., Juvrud, J., Green, D., & Marciszko, C. (2018) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00290 · Cited by 43
“In their recent paper, Stahl and Feigenson (2015) demonstrated that a violation of expectations generated enhanced learning and promoted information seeking behaviors in 11-month-old infants.”
BackgroundCheng, C., Káldy, Z., & Blaser, E. (2019) · Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2019.100616 · Cited by 40
Getting Comfortable with Uncertainty: The Road to Creativity in Preschool Children
Evans, N. S., Todaro, R. D., Golinkoff, R. M., & Hirsh‐Pasek, K. (2022) · Creativity theory and action in education · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-98729-9_13 · Cited by 38
Inferential social learning: Cognitive foundations of human social learning and teachingPreprint
Hyowon Gweon, C. (2021) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/8n34t · Cited by 38
“, objects [25], agents [26], number [28], and geometry [29]) that allows them to predict future events [30], explore events that violate these predictions [31], perform actions to learn from self-generated evidence [32,33], and even infer the cause of their failures when such actions fail [34].”
BackgroundInfants anticipate probabilistic but not deterministic outcomes
Téglás, E., & Bonatti, L. L. (2016) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2016.09.003 · Cited by 37
Response latencies and eye gaze provide insight on how toddlers gather evidence under uncertainty
Leckey, S., Selmeczy, D., Kazemi, A., Johnson, E. G., Hembacher, E., & Ghetti, S. (2020) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-020-0913-y · Cited by 36
Metadata
- Authors
- Stahl, A. E., & Feigenson, L.
- Affiliations
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Stahl, Aimee E.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2015-04-03
- Volume
- 348
- Issue
- 6230
- Pages
- 91-94
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- PMC
- PMC5861377
- OpenAlex
- W1980054804
- Cited by
- 617
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2026: 40 · 2025: 60 · 2024: 92 · 2023: 46 · 2022: 64 · 2021: 53 · 2020: 93 · 2019: 56 · 2018: 48 · 2017: 29 · 2016: 26 · 2015: 9
- FWCI
- 93.92
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (DGE-1232825)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Psychological and Educational Research Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Keywords
- expectancy violation, infant learning, exploration, information seeking, hypothesis testing, prior expectations, object behavior, surprise, early learning, cognitive development
- MeSH terms
- Child Development, Cognition, Exploratory Behavior, Humans, Infant, Learning, Knowledge
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