But that's possible! Infants, pupils, and impossible events.

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Science
• Infant Perception

Background:

• Violation of expectation (VOE) tasks commonly assess infant knowledge by measuring looking times to impossible events.
• These tasks typically assume prior knowledge and measure surprise, but the role of learning within the task itself is less explored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the influence of learning within a task by familiarizing infants with impossible events.
• To explore the utility of pupil dilation as a dependent measure in infancy research.

Main Methods:

• Nine-month-old infants were habituated to impossible events involving toy trains changing color while occluded.
• A factorial design analyzed perceptual (novelty-familiarity) and conceptual (possible-impossible) variables.
• Looking times and pupil dilation were recorded as measures of infant response.

Main Results:

• Infants demonstrated greater responding to possible events compared to impossible events after familiarization.
• Pupil dilation provided more nuanced interpretation of infant perception than looking times alone.
• Findings indicate that infants' responses are influenced by learning that occurs during the task.

Conclusions:

• Learning plays a significant role in violation of expectation tasks.
• Pupil dilation is a valuable and precise measure for studying infant perception and cognition.
• This study reframes the understanding of how infants acquire and process information about their environment.