Super Surprise!

10- to 13-month-old babies.

This study will take place on a video call, live with a researcher! Clicking on the “Schedule a time to participate” button will send you to an online calendar where you can select a date and time that works for you.

Babies look longer at events that are surprising to them, but are they equally surprised by objects that do surprising things as they are characters who do surprising things? First, your baby will see two objects. One object will behave expectedly, while the other will behave unexpectedly. Then your baby will watch one character be happy for their friend's success and then be sad for their friend's success later on. We measure how long your baby looks at all of the events, and ask whether your baby is more surprised by one set of events over the other.

We know that babies expect objects to adhere to gravity and friends to be happy for each other when they succeed. In these kinds of studies, babies look longer at events that defy their expectations, but we don't know whether babies look equally long at events that feature different kinds of surprises.

In this study, we ask whether babies are more surprised by one kind of unexpected event compared to the other, or if babies are equally surprised by different unexpected events. This would tell us whether babies are sensitive to surprises in the world, regardless of what kind they are, or whether some babies are more attuned to object surprises while others are more attuned to social surprises. This is especially important because infants also learn from surprising events, so knowing if babies are better detectors of one kind of surprise versus the other could tell us what might help them learn better in each situation!

15 minutes

Participants will receive a $5 Amazon.com gift card for completing the study with an experimenter. The gift card will be sent within 24 hours after the appointment is complete. Only one gift card per participant and the participant must be in the age range for the study to receive the gift card.