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Poster #57 - Associations between mothers’ and children's curiosity in the Turkish Context

Thu, March 23, 11:00 to 11:45am, Salt Palace Convention Center, Floor: 1, Hall A-B

Abstract

A growing body of research suggests that curiosity is an indicator of learning and personal growth (Kashdan, 2004). However, curiosity is not a unified phenomenon. There is a two-dimensional approach to study children’s epistemic curiosity (Litman, 2019). Accordingly, interest type (I-type) curiosity includes children’s pleasurable experiences and interest towards the unknown, whereas deprivation type (D-type) curiosity includes children’s unpleasant feelings when they lack knowledge. As in children, adults’ curiosity is also a multi-faceted phenomenon (Piotrowski et al., 2014). Despite the growing interest in curiosity literature, there is a scarcity in research exploring the precursors of this construct. Of these precursors, parents’ curiosity orientation and the ways they interact with their children are of particular interest in this study. In this exploratory study, we aim to examine the association between parents’ and children’s curiosity domains, as well as parents’ curiosity-promoting behaviors in a joint book reading task.
A total of 108 Turkish mother-child dyads participated in this online study (Mage of mothers = 39.5 years, SDage of mothers = 17.3 months, Mage of children = 60.1 months, SDage of children = 9.54 months, 53.7% girls). Coding is ongoing for an additional sample of 138 children from the US. Turkish mothers completed a set of questionnaires. The I/D Young Children Curiosity Scale (Piotrowski et al., 2014) measured children’s interest type curiosity (orientation towards carefree and joyful forms of intellectual exploration) and deprivation type curiosity (orientation to reduce unpleasant experiences of feeling deprived). The Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale (Kashdan et al., 2018) measured mothers’ multi-faceted curiosity including joyous exploration (pure enjoyment of novel stimuli), social curiosity (interest in the lives of others), stress tolerance (managing the distress that arises with unfamiliar stimuli), deprivation sensitivity (the need to resolve a lack of information), and thrill-seeking (passion for adventure). To measure mothers’ curiosity-promoting behaviors towards their children, we designed a wordless picture book about the sea adventures of a character (see Figure 1). We asked parents to read the book to their children as they would do at home. We coded mothers’ sensitivity and cognitive stimulation levels based on their overall interaction during the joint book reading. Sensitivity included helping their children to have a positive and enjoyable learning experience, and cognitive stimulation referred to stimulation to encourage children’s learning. Zero-order correlations of the study variables are presented in Table 1.
Children's interest and deprivation type curiosity was moderately correlated (r = .611, p = .001). Mothers’ joyous exploration was associated with both children's interest and deprivation type curiosity (r = .27, p = .006 and r = .313, p = .002, respectively). Observational measures of mothers’ sensitivity and cognitive stimulation were associated with childrens’ interest type curiosity (r = .258, p = .016 and r = .225, p = .036, respectively), but not with children's deprivation type curiosity. Taken together, these preliminary associations point out that we not only replicate past work showing that curiosity across the lifespan is a multidimensional construct, but we also extend these findings by showing that parental curiosity-promoting behavior has differential effects on different aspects of children’s curiosity.

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