Editors’ Introduction and Review: An Appraisal of Surprise: Tracing the Threads That Stitch It Together

Abstract

Though the scientific study of surprise dates back to Darwin (), there was an upsurge in interest beginning in the 1960s and 70s, and this has continued to the present. Recent developments have shed much light on the cognitive mechanisms and consequences of surprise, but research has often been siloed within sub‐areas of Cognitive Science. A central challenge for research on surprise is, therefore, to connect various research programs around their overlapping foci. This issue has its roots in a symposium on surprise, entitled “Triangulating Surprise: Expectations, Uncertainty, and Making Sense,” at the 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (Quebec City, July 2014). Building on the interdisciplinary conversations that started at the symposium, this issue aims to draw attention to some promising empirical and modeling results and their theoretical implications. The present paper sets the stage for the issue by presenting a historical summary, discussing contrasting definitions of surprise, and then by tracing major threads that run through both this issue and the larger literature on surprise. Our aim is to develop broader, shared understandings of the main insights, theories, and findings regarding surprise, with a view to supporting future integration and progress.

Tackling Scientific Misconceptions: The Element of Surprise

“…Therefore, we cannot completely rule out that a third variable caused by generating predictions could have led to both higher surprise and a higher likelihood of belief revision. It is further questionable whether a brief increase in arousal following a violation of expectation is sufficient to infer that children also felt surprised (for a recent summary of the debate on the state of surprise as an emotion, see Munnich, Foster, & Keane, 2019; Reisenzein et al., 2019). Future research could include self‐reports of surprise intensity and correlate those with pupil dilation data.…”

The oculomotor signature of expected surprise

“…Furthermore, uncertainty could also be qualified as ‘surprise’. Surprise is a polysemic term that can be interpreted in different ways and has been hypothesized to underlie essential functions like learning 14 , 15 and emotions 16 , 17 . In the present study, we will use ‘surprise’ to quantify the unexpectedness of a particular event occurring from a random variable (‘stimulus-bound’ surprise 4 ).…”

The Oculomotor Signature of Expected Surprise

“…Uncertainty could also be qualified as 'surprise'. Surprise is a polysemic term that can be interpreted in several different ways and is hypothesized to underlie essential functions like learning 27,28 and emotions 29,30 . In the present study, we will use 'surprise' to quantify the unexpectedness of a particular event occurring from a random variable ('stimulus-bound' surprise 4 ).…”