Mapping curiosity in school-age children : Taxonomy, tasks, and preliminary findings

Prenevost, Mathilde H. and Ford, Emily and FitzGibbon, Lily and Bazhydai, Marina (2026) Mapping curiosity in school-age children : Taxonomy, tasks, and preliminary findings. In: Cognitive Development Society, 2026-04-09 - 2026-04-11.

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Abstract

Despite decades of research, little progress has been made when it comes to understanding both how children’s curiosity develops and how curiosity influences other areas of development (e.g., Grossnickle, 2016; Jirout et al., 2024). We presented children (N= 34, 7-11 years) with a battery of established and novel curiosity measures, including one parent-report questionnaire (Piotrowski et al., 2014), two self-report questionnaires (Post & Walma van der Molen, 2019; Evans & Jirout, 2023) and two novel behavioral tasks. An ambiguity preference task to study curiosity in response to visual ambiguity. A multifaceted exploration task assessed exploratory breadth and depth, along with curiosity ratings and question-asking for perceptual, epistemic and interpersonal content.[GU1.1] We found a significant correlation between the two child self-report measures of curiosity (attitudes towards curiosity and general trait curiosity): r = .49, p < .01. Self-reported general curiosity was also significantly correlated with question-asking (r = .37, p = .03) and curiosity ratings on the ambiguity preference task (r = .68, p < .001). However, there were no significant correlations between the self-report and parent-report measures of curiosity (rs =.26-.04, ps > .1). Moreover, none of the questionnaires predicted children’s choices on the ambiguity preference task (βs = .31- -.26, ps > .1), or exploration on the multifaceted exploration task (βs = .18 - -.23, ps > .1). Further, the three behavioral indicators of curiosity: ambiguity preference, exploratory breadth and exploration depth were not significantly correlated (rs = .28- -.14, ps > .1). These findings suggest that commonly used self- and parent-report measures may not capture the same underlying aspects of children’s curiosity as behavioural indicators and highlights the need for more integrative and developmentally sensitive approaches to assessing children’s curiosity.