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Direct linkFrancesco Poli; Marlene Meyer; Rogier B. Mars; Sabine Hunnius – Child Development, 2025
Humans are driven by an intrinsic motivation to learn, but the developmental origins of curiosity-driven exploration remain unclear. We investigated the computational principles guiding 4-year-old children's exploration during a touchscreen game (N = 102, F = 49, M = 53, primarily white and middle-class, data collected in the Netherlands from…
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Young Children, Learning Motivation, Discovery Learning
Elfriede R. Holstein; Maria Theobald; Leonie S. Weindorf; Garvin Brod – Child Development, 2025
We investigated the role of children's conflict monitoring skills in revising an intuitive scientific theory. Children aged 5 to 9 (N = 177; 53% girls, data collected in Germany from 2019-2023) completed computer-based tasks on water displacement, a concept prone to misconceptions. Children predicted which of two objects would displace more water…
Descriptors: Children, Conflict, Task Analysis, Foreign Countries
Hermansen, Tone K.; Ronfard, Samuel; Harris, Paul L.; Zambrana, Imac M. – Child Development, 2021
Children (N = 278, 34-71 months, 54% girls) were told which of two figurines turned on a music box and also observed empirical evidence either confirming or conflicting with that testimony. Children were then asked to sort novel figurines according to whether they could make the music box work or not. To see whether children would explore which…
Descriptors: Preschool Children, Cognitive Processes, Observation, Investigations
Aboody, Rosie; Zhou, Caiqin; Jara-Ettinger, Julian – Child Development, 2021
When deciding whether to explore, agents must consider both their need for information and its cost. Do children recognize that exploration reflects a trade-off between action costs and expected information gain, inferring epistemic states accordingly? In two experiments, 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 144; of diverse race and ethnicity) judge that an…
Descriptors: Preschool Children, Discovery Learning, Information Seeking, Epistemology
Wu, Yang; Gweon, Hyowon – Child Development, 2021
Emotional expressions are abundant in children's lives. What role do they play in children's causal inference and exploration? This study investigates whether preschool-aged children use others' emotional expressions to infer the presence of unknown causal functions and guide their exploration accordingly. Children (age: 3.0-4.9; N = 112, the…
Descriptors: Preschool Children, Social Cognition, Emotional Response, Prior Learning
Richardson, Emory; Sheskin, Mark; Keil, Frank C. – Child Development, 2021
Two studies ask whether scaffolded children (n = 243, 5-6 years and 9-10 years) recognize that assistance is needed to learn to use complex artifacts. In Study 1, children were asked to learn to use a toy pantograph. While children recognized the need for assistance for indirect knowledge, 70% of scaffolded children claimed that they would have…
Descriptors: Scaffolding (Teaching Technique), Discovery Learning, Difficulty Level, Direct Instruction
Ine H. van Liempd; Ora Oudgenoeg-Paz; Paul P. M. Leseman – Child Development, 2025
Object exploration is considered a driver of motor, cognitive, and social development. However, little is known about how early childhood education and care settings facilitate object exploration. This study examined if children's exploration of objects during free play was facilitated by the use of particular spatial components (floor, tables,…
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Toddlers, Preschool Children, Object Manipulation
