![]() Previously, curiosity has mainly been studied in older kids and adults, but Feigenson and Perez wanted to study infant cognition in a different way. “What the data suggests is that some three-year-olds have a leg up or seem particularly well positioned to learn a lot about the world.” “Something about a baby’s curiosity about magic tricks is predicting how curious they become as preschoolers,” Lisa Feigenson, co-director of the Johns Hopkins University Laboratory for Child Development said. The researchers believe these unexpected events are learning opportunities for babies and their work shows some babies are better at noticing them than others. The study found that the babies who looked at the unexpected events the longest were the same ones whose parents rated them as most-curious in an information-seeking and problem-solving way. (They would have liked to bring them back to the lab after they turned 3-years-old, but were unable to due to the pandemic.) ![]() To determine if this difference was indicative of the baby’s future thinking, the study sent the babies’ parents standardized curiosity questionnaires. The researchers also noted there was little change in the least interested babies over the six-month period. “Babies are affected by these magical events in different ways, and these ways appear to be stable across a six-month period during infancy.” “We found babies who looked really long at magical objects at 11 months were the same babies that looked really long at magical objects at 17 months,” lead author and Johns Hopkins graduate student Jasmin Perez said in a release. After six months, the babies, now 17 months old, saw either a new toy that behaved normally or a toy that seemed to float in mid-air. At 11 months old, the babies were shown a toy that behaved normally, while others seemingly saw the toy pass through a wall. The researchers looked at 65 babies over a period of time. The first-of-its-kind study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and suggests baby’s level of interest remains constant over time. Children continued engaging in some level of exploration to diversify their options.According to a 2021 study from Johns Hopkins University, the most curious babies become the most curious toddlers-and it could predict their future cognitive abilities. Only after we unveiled the content of alternative opaque cups, which yielded better outcomes than the visible options during an intervention phase, did apes quickly overcome their initial risk aversion towards uncertain options. We found that children were more likely to explore the uncertain option than the great apes when no other information was available. The authors add, "In this comparative set of studies, we explored whether children and non-human great apes would be curious to forego a visible benefit under a transparent cup to explore an uncertain option under an opaque cup. However, after learning about the rewards of exploring uncertainty, apes quickly applied this knowledge to future scenarios. The results suggest that children may be more motivated to explore the unknown, or less risk-averse than great apes, the authors say. The study is the first to compare curiosity in human children and great apes using the same experimental set-up. When the hidden reward was briefly revealed and participants were allowed to change their choice, over 88% of apes and children chose the opaque cup with the larger reward at least once. ![]() On average, children were more likely to forego the certain reward in favor of the mysterious one-85% and 77% of children chose the opaque cup at least once during the fourth and fifth studies respectively, compared to 24% of apes in the third study. Children aged three to five years old were given a similar task, with stickers as a reward. One cup was transparent and contained a small reward, while the other was opaque, hiding a larger reward. In a series of experiments, they asked adult chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), bonobos (Pan paniscus), and orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) to choose between two up-turned plastic cups covering some grapes. To investigate, researchers tested whether captive great apes and human children would choose an unknown option over a visible reward. We are motivated to explore and investigate mysterious or unknown objects, but do other great apes share this innate curiosity? ![]()
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