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The Goldilocks Effect: Human Infants Allocate Attention to Visual Sequences That Are Neither Too Simple Nor Too Complex

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  • Celeste Kidd
  • Steven T Piantadosi
  • Richard N Aslin

Abstract

Human infants, like immature members of any species, must be highly selective in sampling information from their environment to learn efficiently. Failure to be selective would waste precious computational resources on material that is already known (too simple) or unknowable (too complex). In two experiments with 7- and 8-month-olds, we measure infants’ visual attention to sequences of events varying in complexity, as determined by an ideal learner model. Infants’ probability of looking away was greatest on stimulus items whose complexity (negative log probability) according to the model was either very low or very high. These results suggest a principle of infant attention that may have broad applicability: infants implicitly seek to maintain intermediate rates of information absorption and avoid wasting cognitive resources on overly simple or overly complex events.

Suggested Citation

  • Celeste Kidd & Steven T Piantadosi & Richard N Aslin, 2012. "The Goldilocks Effect: Human Infants Allocate Attention to Visual Sequences That Are Neither Too Simple Nor Too Complex," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(5), pages 1-8, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0036399
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0036399
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    Cited by:

    1. Cory D Bonn & Maria-Eirini Netskou & Arlette Streri & Maria Dolores de Hevia, 2019. "The association of brightness with number/duration in human newborns," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-23, October.
    2. Kelly E. Robles & Nicole A. Liaw & Richard P. Taylor & Dare A. Baldwin & Margaret E. Sereno, 2020. "A shared fractal aesthetic across development," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-8, December.
    3. Elisabeth A. Karuza & Ari E. Kahn & Danielle S. Bassett, 2019. "Human Sensitivity to Community Structure Is Robust to Topological Variation," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2019, pages 1-8, February.
    4. Giovanni Cassani & Robert Grimm & Walter Daelemans & Steven Gillis, 2018. "Lexical category acquisition is facilitated by uncertainty in distributional co-occurrences," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(12), pages 1-36, December.
    5. Alexandr Ten & Pramod Kaushik & Pierre-Yves Oudeyer & Jacqueline Gottlieb, 2021. "Humans monitor learning progress in curiosity-driven exploration," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, December.
    6. Kurt Gray & Peter Schmitt & Nina Strohminger & Karim S Kassam, 2014. "The Science of Style: In Fashion, Colors Should Match Only Moderately," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(7), pages 1-3, July.

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