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Infants' Domain-General Responses to Expectancy Violations.

Nick Bisbee¹, Lisa Feigenson¹

¹Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

Developmental Science

|June 15, 2026

Summary

Infants

Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Cognitive Science
Neuroscience

Background:

Theories of modularity suggest specialized cognitive systems process distinct inputs from early development.
Infants exhibit differential expectations for physical objects versus social agents, implying domain-specific processing.
The independent functioning of these specialized systems in early behavioral responses remains underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether infants' responses to physical and social expectancy violations are driven by independent systems.
To examine individual differences in infants' responses across physical and social domains.
To explore the relationship between early surprise responses and later curiosity.

Main Methods:

Tested 14- to 27-month-old infants with 16 events violating expectations in object physics or social behavior domains.

Keywords:

CFA core knowledge curiosity domain‐general infants prediction error violation‐of‐expectation

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Analyzed individual differences in visual interest towards surprising versus expected events.

Utilized latent factor analysis to model responses across physical and social domains.

Main Results:

Infants' surprise responses to expectancy violations were better explained by a single latent factor than separate domain-specific factors.
The domain-generality of surprise responses increased with age.
Individual differences in cross-domain surprise predicted later curiosity.

Conclusions:

Infants' responses to expectancy violations in both physical and social domains recruit a domain-general prediction error mechanism.
The domain-general nature of prediction error processing strengthens with age.
Early individual differences in prediction error detection link to later curiosity and exploration.