Surpise! New Research Discovers Fascinating Way Infants Learn New Information [VIDEO]

A new study discovered a surprising way babies learn new information. When an infant sees an object behave in a surprising way, she does everything she can to learn more about its mysteries, and the initial surprise ends up helping her learn.

Researchers from the John Hopkins University on Thursday reported a series of experiments that demonstrated that babies actively sought to learn when they witnessed something surprising and were less inclined to learn when they saw something predictable.

The Johns Hopkins team conducted a series of four experiences on 110 infants who were 11 months' old at the time over a period of three and a half years. The age was chosen because they wanted preverbal infants. The research scientists sought to observe how the babies responded to both surprising and predictable situations involving a particular object.

They watched various demonstrations, some defying their expectations like a ball seeming to roll through a wall or hover in the air and others involving expected outcomes like a wall stopping the ball or the ball simply sitting on a platform.

"We wanted to know why babies have this interest in surprising events," lead author and Johns Hopkins doctoral candidate Aimee E. Stahl told The Washington Post. "Why does this surprise reaction occur? That's remained very mysterious, even though the reaction itself is so established."

"Infants are very adept learners, and can learn about the world through observation and exploration," Stahl said.

"We found that babies learned new information about objects more efficiently if they saw that object do something unexpected than if it had done something expected."

The babies also preferred to explore objects that behaved surprisingly, doing so in a way that suggested they were seeking an explanation about the unexpected outcome.

"Infants who witnessed a ball pass through the wall, for example, tested that ball's solidity by banging it on a solid surface. But babies who witnessed a ball float in mid-air instead tested the ball's gravity by dropping it onto the floor," Stahl said.