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Novelty or Surprise?
Open accessAbstract
Novelty and surprise play significant roles in animal behavior and in attempts to understand the neural mechanisms underlying it. They also play important roles in technology, where detecting observations that are novel or surprising is central to many applications, such as medical diagnosis, text processing, surveillance, and security. Theories of motivation, particularly of intrinsic motivation, place novelty and surprise among the primary factors that arouse interest, motivate exploratory or avoidance behavior, and drive learning. In many of these studies, novelty and surprise are not distinguished from one another: the words are used more-or-less interchangeably. However, while undeniably closely related, novelty and surprise are very different. The purpose of this article is first to highlight the differences between novelty and surprise and to discuss how they are related by presenting an extensive review of mathematical and computational proposals related to them, and then to explore the implications of this for understanding behavioral and neuroscience data. We argue that opportunities for improved understanding of behavior and its neural basis are likely being missed by failing to distinguish between novelty and surprise.
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“This underwrites Bayesian experimental design [134] and active learning in statistics [135], intrinsic motivation and artificial curiosity in machine learning and robotics [136, 137, 138, 139, 140].”
From The free energy principle made simpler but not too simple (2023) · cites this paper as [138]
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“The term novelty also refers to the fact that it has not previously been experienced or encountered (Barto et al., 2013).”
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“…and univer‐ sal of human emotions” (Maguireetal., 2011, p. 176) and plays a key role in ongoing sense‐making and representa‐ tional updating processes once it becomes challenging to square new messages with prior representations, which affects learning and decision making (Barto et al., 2013).”
BackgroundBelief-consistent information is most shared despite being the least surprising
Goebel, J. T., Susmann, M. W., Parthasarathy, S., Gamal, H. E., Garrett, R., & Wegener, D. T. (2024) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-024-56086-2 · Cited by 5
Breaking down (and moving beyond) novelty as a trigger of curiosity
Liquin, E. G., & Lombrozo, T. (2024) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x23003333 · Cited by 1
O'Neill, O. S., George, K. V., Minard, E. P., & Winters, B. D. (2024) · Neurobiology of Learning and Memory · doi:10.1016/j.nlm.2024.108017 · Cited by 1
Irrationality in humans and creativity in AI
Sobetska, O. (2025) · Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence · doi:10.3389/frai.2025.1579704 · Cited by 3
Sameness entices, but novelty enchants in fanfiction online
Jing, E., DeDeo, S., Wright, D. R., & Ahn, Y. (2025) · Humanities and Social Sciences Communications · doi:10.1057/s41599-025-05166-3 · Cited by 8
“Cognitive science emphasizes the role of memory in determining novelty; a stimulus is novel if it does not match anything in memory (Barto et al. 2013).”
The Fast and the Curious: Creative Improvisation as Action-oriented Abduction
Linson, A., Schulkin, J. A., & Clark, A. (2025) · Imagination Cognition and Personality · doi:10.1177/02762366251365906 · Cited by 2
“The expected information gain is key here, and lends certain actions epistemic affor-dance that can be seen in the light of salience and novelty (Barto et al., 2013; Schwartenbeck et al., 2013).”
Synthesizing Evolving Symbolic Representations for Autonomous Systems
Sartor, G., Oddi, A., Rasconi, R., Santucci, V. G., & Meo, R. (2025) · Progress in Artificial Intelligence · doi:10.1007/s13748-025-00394-9 · Cited by 1
“In literature, IMs have also been categorized into different typologies [66–68].”
From regularity to normativity: active inference and the origin of normative attitudes
Tison, R., & Zawidzki, T. W. (2025) · Synthese · doi:10.1007/s11229-025-05297-9 · Cited by 1
“In short, active inference comprises both pragmatic goal seeking behaviour and epistemic novelty-seeking behaviour (Barto et al., 2013; Schwartenbeck et al., 2013).”
Green hotel experiences and transformative well-being
Mihiretu, H. A., Legendre, T. S., & Chan, E. S. W. (2026) · Journal Of Vacation Marketing · doi:10.1177/13567667261416124 · Cited by 1
Sociodemographic and visit-related correlates of ‘psychologically rich’ nature visits
Elliott, L. R., Garrett, J. K., Lovell, R., Kibowski, F., & Gaston, K. J. (2026) · Journal of Environmental Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.102999 · Cited by 1
Lane, R. D. (2026) · Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association · doi:10.1177/00030651261423147 · Cited by 1
Curiosity and metacognition: Towards a unified framework for learning and education in the age of AI
Desvaux, C., Abdelghani, R., Oudeyer, P., & Sauzeon, H. (2026) · Advances in child development and behavior · doi:10.1016/bs.acdb.2026.04.005 · Cited by 1
Reviewing Structure Learning in and Out of the Active Inference Framework
Neacsu, V., So, W.-K., Rutar, D., Costa, L. D., Adams, R. A., & Friston, K. J. (2026) · Minds and Machines · doi:10.1007/s11023-026-09787-8 · Cited by 1
The Free Energy Principle and Free Markets
Friston, K. J., Medrano, J., & Verbelen, T. (2026) · Entropy · doi:10.3390/e28090956 · Cited by 1
Self-Supervised Network Distillation for Exploration
Zhang, X., Dai, R., Chen, W., & Qiu, J. (2023) · International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence · doi:10.1142/s0218001423510217 · Cited by 1
Measuring Exposure: Frequency as a Linguistic Game Changer
Divjak, D. (2019) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781316084410.003 · Cited by 1
Salience: Capturing Attention in and through Language
Divjak, D. (2019) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781316084410.008 · Cited by 1
A Study on EFL Learners’ Preferred Types of Salience and Categories in Movie English
Ryu, D. H. (2021) · STEM Journal · doi:10.16875/stem.2021.22.3.15 · Cited by 1
Expectation of irrelevant novel stimuli has no consistent effect on recognition memory
Reichardt, R., Simor, P., & Polner, B. (2022) · Scandinavian Journal of Psychology · doi:10.1111/sjop.12807 · Cited by 1
“in human neuroscience (Barto et al., 2013; Reichardt et al., 2020; Schomaker & Meeter, 2015) we wanted to assess if the behavioral result reported by Wittmann and colleagues can be”
BackgroundResultFriston, K. J. (2022) · Physics of Life Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.plrev.2022.07.007 · Cited by 1
Hidden Markov Models for Surprising Pattern Detection in Discrete Symbol Sequence Data
McGarry, K. (2022) · Lecture notes in computer science · doi:10.1007/978-3-031-21441-7_13 · Cited by 1
“The ability to be surprised is fundamental to many human cognitive and intellectual endeavors, it is an essential trait for learning and discovering new knowledge [1,2].”
Computational-Level Analysis of Constraint Compliance for General Intelligence
Wray, R. E., Jones, S. J., & Laird, J. E. (2023) · Lecture notes in computer science · doi:10.1007/978-3-031-33469-6_32 · Cited by 1
Limits to surprise of recommender systems
de Lima, A. P. (2019) · doi:10.11606/d.100.2019.tde-15042019-175412 · Cited by 1
Heavner, R. (2019) · doi:10.1002/9781119185574.ch2 · Cited by 1
Granato, G., Cartoni, E., Rold, F. D., Mattera, A., & Baldassarre, G. (2021) · arXiv (Cornell University) · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2106.03688 · Cited by 3
“…2011) the reward signal might be produced by intrinsic motivation processes, for example related to the novelty or surprise of the experienced stimuli (Barto et al., 2013) or to the acquisition of competence during the accomplishment of a desired goal (White, 1959; Santucci et al., 2016).”
BackgroundSelf-citationDepraz, N., & Celle, A. (2019) · Consciousness & emotion book series · doi:10.1075/ceb.11.int · Cited by 1
Advancing Self-Determination Theory With Computational Intrinsic Motivation: The Case of CompetencePreprint
Lintunen, E. M., Ady, N. M., Christian Guckelsberger, B., & Deterding, S. (2024) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/7qy35 · Cited by 1
Metadata
- Authors
- Barto, A., Mirolli, M., & Baldassarre, G.
- Affiliations
- University of Massachusetts Amherst (US)
- National Research Council (IT)
- Corresponding author
- Barto, Andrew
- Venue
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2013
- Volume
- 4
- Pages
- 907-907
- ISSN
- 1664-1078 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3858647
- OpenAlex
- W2085754318
- Cited by
- 397
- References
- 107
- Citations by year
- 2026: 58 · 2025: 32 · 2024: 44 · 2023: 37 · 2022: 51 · 2021: 30 · 2020: 38 · 2019: 44 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 13.86
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Frontiers in Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- European Commission (231722)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Psychological and Educational Research Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
- Keywords
- novelty, surprise, intrinsic motivation, exploratory behavior, avoidance behavior, learning, psychobiology, novelty detection
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