Children up to a year old have enough knowledge of the world to be surprised at a ball passing through a wall and a car moving through the air. And this surprise is a powerful stimulus for their development.
How do children under the age of one year learn about the objects of the world around them? Any parent will answer this question for you: children put them in their mouths as deep as possible, or that there are forces pounding them against other solid objects. (In this connection, it is better to postpone the acquaintance of children with, for example, mobile phones or sleeping pills until a more conscious age.) But children do this only in relation to objects that cause their genuine interest, psychologists at Johns Hopkins University (USA) say (1) .
The experiment involved 11-month-old babies. They were shown quite ordinary toys – for example, rubber balls and cars. The balls rolled down the hill and bounced when they hit the wall, and the cars rolled on the table and fell down when they reached the edge. In general, everything went on as usual. But then the researchers decided to surprise the children. And the balls suddenly began to pass through the wall (through a hole specially made in advance). And the cars, having reached the edge of the table, went further “through the air” (in fact, of course, along a support invisible to children).
And then the babies surprised psychologists. If toys that behaved in a normal, predictable way did not arouse much interest in children, then “magic” cars and balls were exceptionally popular. They strove to shove them into their mouths entirely or break them into pieces. Scientists were forced to state that by the age of 11 months, children have sufficient knowledge about the world to predict the behavior of certain objects. And they are able to be surprised when these same objects behave unpredictably.
“Children react very vividly to objects that surprise them,” says study leader Lisa Feigenson, professor of psychology. “And they use them as an opportunity to learn something new about the world, something that was previously unknown to them. When kids are surprised, they learn much better.” One of the key questions the study raises is where our knowledge comes from in the first place. “Are we born into the world with pre-existing ideas about the world? Lisa Faginson continues. “And if so, how much of our knowledge comes from this ‘inheritance’, and how much comes from interacting with and observing the world around us, as well as the efforts of parents and teachers?” However, in any case, adults should surprise children more often, knowing that they remember unusual situations better and interact more actively with objects that behave strangely.
(1). L. Feigenson, A. Stahl «Observing the unexpected enhances infants’ learning and exploration», www.sciencemag.org