Children's Curiosity about the Biological World

• In Event: The Development of Curiosity: How Children Approach Information and ask Questions to Gain Knowledge

Abstract

Confirmation biases are pervasive in adulthood (Golman et al., 2017; Nickerson, 1998; Talluri et al., 2018). For example, adults often seek information that confirms their intuitions rather than information that challenges those intuitions. These biases may hamper learning about science, which is rife with ideas that contradict our intuitions and expectations. For example, when learning about the biological world, one can encounter many facts that are counterintuitive--some animals can hibernate for months without eating or drinking, other animals can live longer than 100 years, or can echolocate. At present, there is little to no published work examining how a bias to approach belief-consistent information develops or manifest in childhood. Young children may be more curious about information that counters their intuitions and beliefs, or they may demonstrate a confirmation bias by seeking information that is consistent with their existing beliefs. This study was designed to examine children's curiosity, as reflected in how they approach information that is inconsistent with their beliefs.

Method
Children ages 3- to 9-years participated. To evaluate the replicability and robustness of our findings, children were recruited and tested at university labs in the Southeastern US (n=72) and in Toronto, Canada (n=110). For each of 12 real animals (e.g., olms), children were shown a pair of books (with graphically identical covers). One book was described as including a fact consistent with children's intuitions (e.g., "This book is about how olms can live their whole lives underwater"; a novel but intuitive fact); the other book was described as including a fact counter to children's intuitions (e.g., "This book is about how olms can live 10 years without food"; an idea children find highly counterintuitive; Shtulman, 2009). Table 1 lists fact pairs for each animal. Children were asked which book they would like to read, the books were set aside, and this procedure was repeated for the remaining 11 book pairs. Children's "curiosity for the counterintuitive" score was calculated as the number of books (0-12) chosen with counterintuitive content. These methods allowed us to identify whether children's information-seeking is characterized more by curiosity (choosing books with counterintuitive content) or by a confirmation bias (choosing books with intuitive content), and whether this differs with age.

Results & Conclusions
Analyses revealed remarkably similar findings for children in the Southeastern US and for children in Toronto, Canada. In both locations, there was an age-related increase in children's preference for books containing counterintuitive content (Figure 1: US: β = .59, t=4.57, p<.001; Canada: β = .67, t=5.71, p<.001). Planned comparisons of fitted regression values against chance (6.00) revealed that children demonstrated no book preference at 4 years (US: F(1, 70)=1.53, p=.22, Canada: F(1, 108)=.68, p=.18), but by 6-years preferred to engage with books that contained counterintuitive content (US: F(1, 70)=53.04, p<.001, Canada: F(1, 108)=69.98, p<.001). Thus, when seeking new information about the biological world from books, young children initially demonstrated no preference for content and no apparent confirmation bias. However, with increasing age, children were increasingly curious about books with counterintuitive content.
 

Authors

• Jonathan D. Lane, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author

• Samuel Ronfard, University of Toronto
  Non-Presenting Author