Fig. 6. Network violations yield surprise that grows with topological distance.

a Ring graph consisting of 15 nodes, where each node is connected to its nearest neighbors and next-nearest neighbors on the ring. Starting from the boxed node, a sequence can undergo a standard transition (green), a short violation of the transition structure (blue), or a long violation (red). b Our model predicts that subjects’ anticipations of both short (blue) and long (red) violations should be weaker than their anticipations of standard transitions (left). Furthermore, we predict that subjects’ anticipations of violations should decrease with increasing topological distance (right). c Average effects of network violations across 78 subjects, estimated using a mixed effects model (Supplementary Tables 10 and 11), with error bars indicating one standard deviation from the mean. We find that standard transitions yield quicker reactions than both short violations (p < 0.001, t = 4.50, df = 7.15 × 10⁴) and long violations (p < 0.001, t = 8.07, df = 7.15 × 10⁴). Moreover, topologically shorter violations induce faster reactions than long violations (p = 0.011, t = 2.54, df = 3.44 × 10³), thus confirming the predictions of our model. Measurements were on independent subjects, and statistical significance was computed using two-sided F-tests. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.