Violations of social expectations enhance infants' learning

Abstract

When infants see objects behave in surprising ways, they not only notice these violations, but also experience enhanced learning about the objects. Although infants also notice when social agents behave in surprising ways, it is unclear whether violations of social expectations similarly enhance learning. Here we asked whether surprising events in the social domain amplify learning. In three experiments, 16- to 19-month-old infants saw a person behave either expectedly or unexpectedly towards an object, and then had the opportunity to learn about the object or person involved in the event. Experiment 1 presented infants with a person who produced an emotional reaction that was congruent with a target object, as expected, or produced a reaction that was surprisingly incongruent; Experiments 2 and 3 presented infants with a person whose preference among two different goal objects remained consistent, as expected, or suddenly reversed, defying expectations. Across Experiments 1–3, infants exhibited enhanced learning about both the object and, to some extent, the person involved in the surprising event. Combined with previous findings, these findings suggest that early expectations support learning in the social domain as well as in the physical domain.