How Will They Use It?: Infant Expectations About Conventional and Unconventional Object Use

The development of conventional knowledge in infancy remains a central question in how children acquire cultural knowledge and norms. Despite findings that children expect object names and functions to be shared knowledge, open questions remain regarding whether such expectations are already shown in infancy. This study investigated whether infants hold expectations about conventional and unconventional object use using a violation-of-expectation (VOE) paradigm. In two studies, 14- to 20-month-old infants (N = 37) viewed a series of videos featuring an agent interacting with familiar objects (cup, fork, phone, gloves, hat, and shoes) in both conventional and unconventional ways (i.e. putting a cup to your mouth versus your head). Results showed that infants stared longer at conventional events compared to unconventional events when the conventional events were presented first, while no difference was found when the unconventional events were presented first. In other words, instead of showing surprise by looking longer at the unconventional object use, infants pay more attention to conventional object use. These findings suggest that, before two years old, infants already have pre-existing conventional knowledge about object use, and they use such knowledge to guide their attention.