A study of 65 infants finds that, although there is variability in how much longer infants look at depictions of impossible events than possible events, the variability is stable in individual infants when assessed at 11 months and 17 months of age; responses to unexpected events also predicted explanation-based curiosity at 3 years of age, suggesting that detecting prediction errors in infancy may be linked to later cognitive abilities, according to the authors.
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Article #21-03805: "Stable individual differences in infants' responses to violations of intuitive physics," by Jasmín Pérez and Lisa Feigenson.
MEDIA CONTACTS: Jasmín Pérez, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD; email: <jperez33@jhu.edu>; Lisa Feigenson; Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD; email: <feigenson@jhu.edu>
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences