Element of Surprise Help Babies Learn Best

Infants seek out more information about objects that defy expectations.

Infants have innate knowledge about the world, and when their expectations are defied, they learn best, researchers at Johns Hopkins University found.

In a paper that will be published Friday in the journal Science, cognitive psychologists Aimee E. Stahl and Lisa Feigenson demonstrate for the first time that babies learn new things by leveraging the core information with which they are born. When something surprises a baby, like an object not behaving the way she expects it to, she not only focuses on that object but ultimately learns more about it than from a similar yet predictable object.

“For young learners, the world is an incredibly complex place filled with dynamic stimuli. How do learners know what to focus on and learn more about, and what to ignore? Our research suggests that infants use what they already know about the world to form predictions. When these predictions are shown to be wrong, infants use this as a special opportunity for learning,” says Feigenson, a professor of psychological and brain sciences in the university’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. “When babies are surprised, they learn much better, as though they are taking the occasion to try to figure something out about their world.”

The study involved four experiments with pre-verbal 11-month-old babies, designed to determine whether babies learned more effectively about objects that defied their expectations. If they did, researchers wondered if babies would also seek out more information about surprising objects and if this exploration meant babies were trying to find explanations for the objects’ strange behavior.

First the researchers showed the babies both surprising and predictable situations regarding an object. For instance, one group of infants saw a ball roll down a ramp and appear to be stopped by a wall in its path. Another group saw the ball roll down the ramp and appear to pass—as if by magic—right through the wall.

This shows a baby playing with a toy train.
The study involved four experiments with pre-verbal 11-month-old babies, designed to determine whether babies learned more effectively about objects that defied their expectations. Image adapted from the Johns Hopkins video.

When the researchers gave the babies new information about the surprising ball, the babies learned significantly better. In fact, the infants showed no evidence of learning about the predictable ball. Furthermore, the researchers found that the babies chose to explore the ball that had defied their expectations, even more than toys that were brand new but had not done anything surprising.

The researchers found that the babies didn’t just learn more about surprising objects—they wanted to understand them. For instance, when the babies saw the surprising event in which the ball appeared to pass through the wall, they tested the ball’s solidity by banging it on the table. But when babies saw a different surprising event, in which the ball appeared to hover in midair, they tested the ball’s gravity by dropping it onto the floor. These results suggest that babies were testing specific hypotheses about the objects’ surprising behavior.


Infants have innate knowledge about the world and when their expectations are defied, they learn best, researchers at Johns Hopkins University found.

“The infants’ behaviors are not merely reflexive responses to the novelty of surprising outcomes but instead reflect deeper attempts to learn about aspects of the world that failed to accord with expectations,” said Stahl, the paper’s lead author and a doctoral student in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

“Infants are not only equipped with core knowledge about fundamental aspects of the world, but from early in their lives, they harness this knowledge to empower new learning.”

About this learning research

The study was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Contact: Jill Rosen – Johns Hopkins
Source: Johns Hopkins press release
Image Source: The image is adapted from the Johns Hopkins video
Video Source: The video is available at the Johns Hopkins YouTube page. The video is credited to Dave Schmelick, Len Turner and Deirdre Hammer.
Original Research: Abstract for “Observing the unexpected enhances infants’ learning and exploration” by Aimee E. Stahl and Lisa Feigenson in em>Science. Published online April 3 2015 doi:10.1126/science.aaa3799

Share this Psychology News
Join our Newsletter
I agree to have my personal information transferred to AWeber for Neuroscience Newsletter ( more information )
Sign up to receive our recent neuroscience headlines and summaries sent to your email once a day, totally free.
We hate spam and only use your email to contact you about newsletters. You can cancel your subscription any time.