Expectancy violations promote learning in young children.
Expectancy violations promote learning in young children.
复制标题
违反期望可以促进幼儿的学习。
DOI：
10.1016/j.cognition.2017.02.008
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发表时间：
2017
期刊：
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
Feigenson,Lisa
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Stahl,AimeeE;Feigenson,Lisa
儿童，包括婴儿，对他们周围的世界有期望，当这些期望被违反时，他们会产生可靠的反应。然而，人们对这种违背预期的行为如何影响随后的认知知之甚少。在这里，我们检验了违背期望会促进儿童学习的假设。在四个实验中，我们比较了3- 6岁儿童在与他们的核心客体行为知识相悖和符合的情况下学习新单词的能力。在实验1和2中，我们根据两种事件中的一种教孩子们新单词。一个事件违反了对物体的时空或特征属性的预期（例如，一个物体似乎神奇地改变了位置）。另一个事件几乎是相同的，但没有违反预期（例如，一个物体明显地从一个位置移动到另一个位置）。在两个实验中，我们都发现，在意外事件发生后进行教学时，孩子们学得很好，而在预期事件发生后则不然。在实验3中，我们对结果排除了两种可能的解释。最后，在实验4中，我们考察了惊喜对儿童学习的影响是定向的还是漫射的。我们发现惊讶只会增强孩子们对表现令人惊讶的实体的学习，而不是对不相关的物体的学习。总之，这些实验表明，核心知识——以及由核心知识产生的对期望的违背——塑造了新的学习。
Children, including infants, have expectations about the world around them, and produce reliable responses when these expectations are violated. However, little is known about how such expectancy violations affect subsequent cognition. Here we tested the hypothesis that violations of expectation enhance children’s learning. In four experiments we compared 3- to 6-year-old children’s ability to learn novel words in situations that defied versus accorded with their core knowledge of object behavior. In Experiments 1 and 2 we taught children novel words following one of two types of events. One event violated expectations about the spatiotemporal or featural properties of objects (e.g., an object appeared to magically change locations). The other event was almost identical, but did not violate expectations (e.g., an object was visibly moved from one location to another). In both experiments we found that children robustly learned when taught after the surprising event, but not following the expected event. In Experiment 3 we ruled out two alternative explanations for our results. Finally, in Experiment 4, we asked whether surprise affects children’s learning in a targeted or a diffuse way. We found that surprise only enhanced children’s learning about the entity that had behaved surprisingly, and not about unrelated objects. Together, these experiments show that core knowledge – and violations of expectations generated by core knowledge – shapes new learning.