Element of surprise helps babies learn best: Johns Hopkins researchers
Element of surprise helps babies learn best, Johns
Hopkins researchers say
Infants seek out more information about objects that defy
expectations
Jill Rosen / April
2
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.
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.
"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."
The study was supported by the National Science
Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
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