Abstract

Infants tend to look longer at events that violate their expectations. This study examined whether trait curiosity in infants and caregivers predicts individual differences in infants’ visual attention to unexpected outcomes across physical and social domains. Eighty-one infants (Mage = 15.61 months) viewed events involving object relocation, solidity violations, and fairness violations. Distinct dimensions of infant and caregiver curiosity shaped infants’ looking responses: caregiver thrill seeking predicted greater attention to physical violations, whereas infant overall curiosity, social curiosity and caregiver joyous exploration were linked to reduced attention to fairness violations. These findings show that distinct dimensions of infant and caregiver trait curiosity predicted infants’ looking preferences differently across physical and social domains, suggesting that early curiosity may be expressed differently across domains.