As adults, we navigate life by gauging what’s possible and what’s not, using this instinct for nearly every decision. When something unexpected happens — like an elevator door not closing or a wild animal appearing on the street — we respond based on what we believe is likely.
This might seem like an advanced cognitive process, but new research reveals that toddlers also engage in this kind of mental sorting. Even more surprising, the study suggests that experiencing seemingly impossible events can significantly boost learning.
“Starting before their first birthdays, children show heightened interest in events that are impossible or improbable, relative to likely events,” says Lisa Feigenson, to ZME Science. “Our results tell us that even when they’re not explicitly told to do so, toddlers naturally carve up the world in terms of possibilities. They, like adults, find it useful to think about events in terms of modal categories. Some things are likely to happen… some things are unlikely to happen… and some things just can’t happen. “
Impossible, improbable and likely
The study tested two- and three-year-olds using a gumball machine filled with objects in two colors, purple and pink. In one group, both colors were equally likely to appear, making any outcome unsurprising. In another group, one color appeared so rarely that it was improbable. For a final group, the machine was rigged with only one color. So, the appearance of the other color was seemingly impossible.
The children were then given a toy and told its name — a made-up word. Interestingly, those exposed to the “impossible” event learned the new word much better than the others.
“We compared toddlers’ ability to learn about an object that had been involved in probable, improbable, or impossible event. We found that toddlers experienced a large boost in learning about impossible events; this boost was not seen for any of the possible events, no matter how improbable they were. Therefore, young children distinguish between the impossible and the merely improbable,” Feigenson explained in an email.
Why “impossible” events help infants learn better
These findings open up a new perspective on how toddlers process the world and actively revise their knowledge. It seems that impossible events spark a natural curiosity in toddlers, prompting them to seek explanations for what they’ve just seen.
In these moments, toddlers aren’t merely reacting to a visual oddity. Instead, they are pursuing a deeper understanding, looking for something to explain what they’ve just observed.
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“We hypothesize that children’s heightened learning after impossible events reflects their search for an explanation for what they observed. Children were hungry for information that could help them make sense of the curious event we showed them. In contrast, the merely improbable events we showed them didn’t necessarily require an explanation. They were surprising, but kids did not need to revise their understanding of the objects in the scene in order to grasp what had happened,” the researcher told ZME Science.
“We think that ‘impossible events’— or events that totally contradict our mental models of the world around us— launch us into the search for explanations. And our data show that that’s already happening by the time kids are 2 years old.”
This “explanation-seeking” may even be instinctual. Psychologists have long understood that humans, from childhood through adulthood, are wired to seek explanations for things that defy logic. With this study, it appears that even two-year-olds may already be engaging in a process that resembles scientific inquiry, generating hypotheses to make sense of the world.
For adults, impossible events often provoke shock or bewilderment. The researchers noted that children also responded emotionally to the impossible, though their reactions were typically more lighthearted, with responses like laughter or visible puzzlement. “We frequently observed that children who saw the impossible event would laugh, or look puzzled because they registered the impossibility of the outcome.”
Can we harness surprise in learning?
The finding seems to suggest that “impossible” events trigger a surge in curiosity, making kids more willing to absorb information. Feigenson thinks this heightened learning reflects an increase in curiosity. But could we use this in a practical scenario?
Though the research does not yet apply directly to classroom practices, Feigenson suggests some potential applications for early childhood education.
Children may learn better from experiences that challenge their beliefs, opening possibilities for “lesson plans designed to get kids to make a prediction — and then to show them that their prediction was wrong,” she suggests.
“[Seeing that] the world actually operates differently from what kids initially intuited — might result in better learning. This would be a great direction for future research.”
The researchers didn’t look at this directly, but the study’s implications may extend beyond early childhood. Adults, too, experience a similar learning boost when exposed to surprising or inexplicable events, though more research is needed to understand the exact longevity and scope of this effect. For now, though, this “surprise-learning” link sheds light on a new way to approach teaching and engaging learners of all ages.
Plenty of questions regarding human curiosity
This research raises intriguing questions about how young children process the unexpected and how this skill might evolve over time. Do children continue to seek explanations primarily for impossible events as they grow older, or do they become more attuned to improbable ones? And how does the urge to seek explanations change with age?
Feigenson and her team are expanding the research to explore similar reactions in adults. The findings so far indicate that adults also show a heightened learning response to surprising events, though much remains unknown about how this response changes with context and over time. “We are conducting similar work with adults,” she notes, “and also find that adults experience a learning boost from surprising events. But there’s much more to be done in terms of testing how long this learning boost lasts, and the range of situations it applies to.”
In a broader sense, this research adds to a growing body of literature emphasizing the role of curiosity and surprise in learning. Traditional education models often aim to present information in a logical, sequential way. However, if Feigenson and Stahl’s work holds true across age groups, then exposing students to the unexpected — or even designing curricula around surprising contradictions — could unlock deeper levels of engagement and learning.
The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
