Expectations about plant edibility in 6-month-old infants (Rioux & Wertz)
Learning what to eat is not easy. Here we examined 6-month-olds’ expectations about what kinds of entities are likely to be edible using a violation-of-expectation setup in which infants viewed an actor eating parts of two different items. In Experiment 1 (N=40, 20 females), infants expected plants, relative to feature-matched artifacts, to be edible, replicating a previous finding. In Experiment 2 (N=40, 23 females), infants tended to differentially expect fruits to be edible, but not leaves. However, infants’ expectations about fruits presented on their own were attenuated relative to their expectations for whole plants. These findings suggest that there is selectivity in infants' edibility inferences and the kinds of resources prioritized in human diets have shaped infants’ food learning.