Core knowledge violations may be 'moderately impossible,' aligning with the Goldilocks effect on attention allocation¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r3 · q1
Currency · newest study 2019 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q1 i? The authors tentatively suggest their impossible events were minimally distinct from expected outcomes and highly interpretable, possibly making them optimally surprising in the sense of the Goldilocks effect. → Stahl Aimee E. 2019

Evidence¶

Stahl Aimee E. 2019¶

Stahl Aimee E., Feigenson Lisa. (2019). Violations of Core Knowledge Shape Early Learning. Topics in Cognitive Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12389

q1 · i? · review · r3

Theoretical speculation (type e) linking the authors' events to the Goldilocks Effect (Kidd et al., 2012, 2014) and children's preferential recall of minimally counterintuitive concepts (Banerjee et al., 2013). The article explicitly labels this suggestion tentative.

"Although physically impossible, the events were structured such that observers would be likely to generate a prediction about their outcome. Just one aspect of that prediction was then violated"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Impossible but not improbable events boost children's word learning, with step-like rather than graded performance — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Infant look-away follows a U-shaped pattern of information content, consistent with maintaining intermediate rates of information absorption (Goldilocks effect) — a broader claim this one bears on
• Eleven-month-old infants learn a new object-sound mapping after a surprising core knowledge violation but not after an expected outcome — related
• Three- to six-year-old children learn novel verbs and nouns from a single exposure following core knowledge violations, including outside the laboratory — related
• Learning enhancements from core knowledge violations are entity-specific: no benefit for unrelated bystander objects — related
• Eleven-month-old infants who see a core knowledge violation preferentially explore the violating object over a novel distractor — related
• Large arrays exceed young children's attentional resources, preventing optimal allocation to relevant items — related
• Non-linear (Goldilocks) effects of expectations and aspirations on outcomes are small and largely non-significant — related
• Presenting young children with vast numbers of discrete sense impressions would not augment the natural development of intelligence — related