The Role of Surprise in Enhancing Early Learning

infants;children;surprise;learning;exploration;Psychology

Stahl, Aimee ElyseLandau, Barbara ;

Johns Hopkins University

关键词: infants;    children;    surprise;    learning;    exploration;    Psychology;   

Others  :  https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/39516/STAHL-DISSERTATION-2015.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: JOHNS HOPKINS DSpace Repository

【 摘 要 】

Given the overwhelming quantity of information available from the environment, how do young learners know what to attend to and learn about versus what to ignore? In my dissertation I propose that one mechanism for narrowing the learning space is for infants and children to use violations of prior expectations as special opportunities for learning. In Experiment Series 1, I showed 11-month-old infants events that violated core expectations about object behavior, or events that were nearly identical but did not violate expectations. I then taught infants new information about the object that participated in the event, and found that infants learned more effectively following surprising events than expected ones. Control experiments confirmed that this learning was not due to longer perceptual exposure to surprising events or to a general preference for objects that violated expectations, and that the learning enhancement only benefitted those objects that participated in the surprising event.In Experiment 2, I asked whether infants would preferentially seek information from and explanations for objects that behaved surprisingly. I again showed 11-month-old infants perceptually matched surprising and expected events, and gave them the opportunity to explore the object from the event and a new object. Infants who witnessed the surprising event selectively explored the very object that violated their expectations, and more impressively, engaged in hypothesis testing behaviors that reflected the particular kind of violation seen.Finally, in Experiment Series 3 I asked whether this learning enhancement following surprising events is a more general feature of human learning. I examined whether preschool-aged children in a museum setting would learn novel words more effectively following surprising than expected events. I found that, like infants, children showed enhanced learning following events that violated their expectations, and their learning was beneficially constrained to the entity that behaved surprisingly.Together, my experiments show that when infants and children witness an object defy their expectations, they learn about it better, explore it more, and seek explanations for that object’s behavior. Thus, early in life, expectancy violations offer a wedge into the problem of what to learn.