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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 6, 2026

Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task

Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task

Published on: June 1, 2015

Expectancy violations promote learning in young children.

Aimee E Stahl¹, Lisa Feigenson²

¹The College of New Jersey, 2000 Pennington Road, Ewing, NJ 08628, United States.

|March 4, 2017

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Violating children's expectations enhances their learning of new words. Surprise learning is specific to the surprising object, not generalized.

Keywords:

Children Expectations Object knowledge Surprise Word learning

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Last Updated: Mar 6, 2026

Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task

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Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm

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Published on: April 28, 2016

Area of Science:

Cognitive Development
Developmental Psychology
Child Learning

Background:

Children form expectations about the world based on core knowledge.
Expectancy violations elicit reliable responses in children.
The impact of these violations on subsequent learning is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if violations of expectation enhance children's learning.
To determine if surprise learning is targeted or diffuse.

Main Methods:

Four experiments compared 3- to 6-year-old children's word learning.
Novel words were taught following events that either violated or confirmed core knowledge of object behavior.
Learning was assessed for the surprising entity and unrelated objects.

Main Results:

Children robustly learned novel words when taught after an expectation-violating event.
Learning did not occur when words were taught after expected events.
Surprise enhanced learning only for the entity that behaved surprisingly.

Conclusions:

Violations of core knowledge expectations enhance children's learning.
Surprise-driven learning is specific to the surprising event or entity.
Core knowledge and its violations significantly shape new learning in children.