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Element of surprise may play a role in learning

Want to make your baby smarter? New research by Johns Hopkins University has found it may be as simple as throwing some surprises his or her way.

Want to make your baby smarter? New research by Johns Hopkins University has found it may be as simple as throwing some surprises his or her way.

Youngsters learn more about the world when innate intelligence is challenged, cognitive psychologists Aimee E. Stahl and Lisa Feigenson discovered in a study published recently in the journal Science.

The researchers took babies who could not yet talk through four experiments to prove their theory. They presented the babies with situations they could predict, as well as some that were unexpected, and gauged reactions.

The unexpected roused the babies' curiosity. As they tried to figure out what happened, learning was taking place. Further research is needed to determine how the results can be applied to child rearing and education, but the researchers said it potentially could help guide the way babies are taught skills and concepts.

Previous research has shown novelty enhances memory for adults. Novel events stimulate a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which compares new sensory information with existing memories. When something is new, it triggers a rush of the hormone dopamine, which helps the brain store new memories.

One way the Hopkins researchers studied the children was by rolling a ball down a ramp and toward the wall. In one trial, the ball hit the wall, as a baby would expect. In the other, the ball passed through a hidden door in the wall.

The babies didn't pay much attention to the ball that hit the wall - the predictable one. But they grabbed the other ball and banged it on the table, which the researchers interpreted as an attempt to figure out what happened.

"This raises some exciting, intriguing questions about whether surprise could be used by parents and teachers to shape how babies learn," Stahl said. Perhaps a parent could do activities, such as hiding a ball to see if a baby goes to look for it, she said. Or, at a children's museum, a parent could ask an older child to predict how magnets and other objects might work.

- Baltimore Sun