Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Violating infants expectations about solid objects (e.g., a ball passing through a wall) leads to increased exploration andlearning about the objects properties (Stahl & Feigenson, 2015). How limited is this type of learning? Infants can anticipatehow non-solid substances behave and interact (Hespos et al., 2009; 2016), but the non-cohesive nature of substances meansthat they have less predictable shapes and boundaries. Across four trials, we presented 12- to 14-month-olds with itemsthat looked solid or liquid. For half the trials, the items behavior was consistent with its appearance, so, for example, itlooked solid and remained cohesive. For the other half, the behavior was inconsistent. Infants spent significantly moretime exploring the inconsistent items, whether solid or non-solid, F(1, 57) = 24.00, p = .001, p =.29. These results suggestthat infants preference for learning from violations might be a general mechanism responsible for new knowledge.