Babies are best able to learn when there's an element of surprise involved, becoming more interested in exploring when they encounter unexpected situations, researchers have found.

Any object or situation that surprises them and defies their innate knowledge of their world helps spur their learning, scientists at Johns Hopkins University say.

Their study has demonstrated that babies gain new knowledge by leveraging the core, innate information they're born with, they report in the journal Science.

"For young learners, the world is an incredibly complex place filled with dynamic stimuli," explains Lisa Feigenson, a professor of psychological and brain sciences.

"How do learners know what to focus on and learn more about, and what to ignore?"

Their study findings, says Feigenson, suggest infants employ what they inherently know about their world to make predictions.

"When these predictions are shown to be wrong, infants use this as a special opportunity for learning," she says.

In their study involving babies who were 11 months old, the researchers found that when the babies were surprised by something, such as an object behaving in an unexpected way, that object drew their focus and they learned more from it than from a similar object behaving in an expected manner.

In one experiment, one group of babies watched a ball rolling down a ramp until a wall across the ramp stopped it.

Another group of babies watched a similar ball rolling down a similar ramp toward a wall, except the ball seemed to roll through the wall, as though magically.

The "magic" ball drew the interest of that group of babies in a way the ball that behaved predictably had not for the other group, the researchers discovered, causing them to explore that ball, even banging it against a table as if to investigate its solidarity.

"When babies are surprised, they learn much better, as though they are taking the occasion to try to figure something out about their world," Feigenson says.

Their responses to the unexpected novelty of a surprising outcome are not just reflexive, says study co-author Aimee Stahl, "but instead reflect deeper attempts to learn about aspects of the world that failed to accord with expectations."

"Infants are not only equipped with core knowledge about fundamental aspects of the world, but from early in their lives, they harness this knowledge to empower new learning," says Stahl, a doctoral student in psychological and brain sciences.