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In a preregistered pupillometry study we tested whether a perspective cue can both increase and decrease 7.5-month-olds' surprise.In the congruent condition infants saw an agent watching a ball roll behind an occluder. After the agent left, infants saw the ball rolling outside the stage (an informational asymmetry). In the baseline the agent watched the final event as well. At outcome, the occluder was lowered to reveal empty space: congruent with reality, as the ball is out. In the incongruent condition the outcome is identical, but the ball should have been there. Informational asymmetry was manipulated again.We found overall larger pupil dilation in the incongruent condition, indicating infants’ remembering the ball’s existence. As hypothesised, we could increase their surprise in the congruent condition by having the agent last see the ball inside, but found mixed results when trying to use the perspective cue to also decrease infants’ surprise.

The N400 is an ERP component sensitive to semantic violations. Here, we probed if infants’ detection of a mismatch is subject to an altercentric bias: a bias by another person’s perspective. We hid the object in a box at the time of labelling, so its representation had to be maintained. Exp.1 established that 14-month-olds detect when an occluded object is labelled incorrectly (t(27)=2.12, p=0.043). Exp.2 included a perspective mismatch, and labelling was always incongruent for the infant, but in 50% congruent for the other. We found a reduced N400 for the congruent-for-other trials (t(33)=-2.19, p=.036), indicating an altercentric influence on infants’ semantic mismatch detection. Exp.3 probes whether infants detect any incongruence from their perspective when the labelling is always consistent for the other. Preliminary analyses (n=22 out of 34 pre-registered) show no effect of congruency from infants’ perspective, suggesting that congruency for the other may override infants’ own mismatch detection.