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Infants anticipate probabilistic but not deterministic outcomes

Ernő Téglás1, Luca L Bonatti2

  • 1Cognitive Development Center, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.

Cognition
|September 26, 2016
PubMed

Insights

Infants anticipate probable outcomes in uncertain situations but not deterministic ones. This suggests infants prioritize learning novel information over predicting certain events.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Development
  • Infant Psychology
  • Event Expectation

Background:

  • Infants exhibit surprise at impossible or improbable events, suggesting expectation formation.
  • The conditions under which infants form proactive expectations remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between expectation and surprise in preverbal infants.
  • To determine if infants form proactive expectations in probabilistic versus deterministic scenarios.

Main Methods:

  • Observing 12-month-old infants' looking behavior at probabilistic and deterministic events.
  • Analyzing infant responses to expected versus unexpected event continuations.

Main Results:

  • Infants anticipated probable outcomes in uncertain situations and were surprised by improbable ones.
  • Infants did not anticipate the sole possible outcome in deterministic situations, yet showed surprise when it did not occur.

Conclusions:

  • Infant expectation formation differs between probabilistic and deterministic events.
  • Infants may prioritize anticipating events that offer greater potential for novel knowledge acquisition.

Keywords:
AnticipationProbability intuitions in infancy

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