Children and adults can suspend core principles about objects and agents given a small amount of counterevidence on screen

TL;DR

Adults and children can override basic assumptions about objects and agents when shown a few contradictory examples on screen.

Contribution

Demonstrates that core principles of object and agent reasoning can be suspended with minimal counterevidence in a screen-based context.

Findings

Adults and children suspended core physical and psychological principles after 3-6 counterevidence examples on screen.

Participants accepted counterintuitive psychological principles more readily than physical ones.

Findings suggest human learning is flexible and can override core knowledge with screen-based evidence.

Abstract

Human children and adults learn from statistical evidence and acquire new knowledge across many domains. Under some circumstances, human adults and nonhuman animals can suspend perceptual and cognitive priors given counterevidence. Can human learners also suspend core principles that guide our reasoning about objects and agents starting in infancy (e.g., objects are solid and cannot pass through each other; agents take the most efficient path to accomplish their goal)? In 12 experiments, we found that adults (N = 209 for physical principles; N = 189 for psychological principles) and 4- to 6-year-old children (N = 96 for physical principles; N = 96 for psychological principles) suspended these core principles on a screen when provided with as few as 3 to 6 pieces of counterevidence of each principle. Participants more readily accepted the counterevidence and were more likely to generalize counterintuitive principles for psychological than physical principles. These findings are consistent with two different conclusions: The first challenges the core knowledge view and demonstrates the power and flexibility of human learning, and the second suggests humans apply sophisticated reasoning to on-screen events. This study paves the way for future studies to test whether humans can suspend core principles in real-world contexts.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-025-31534-9.

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