Curious About Curiosity

For 6-to-10 year olds who live in the United States or Canada.

This study will take place on a video call, live with a researcher! Clicking on the “Schedule a time to participate” button will send you to an online calendar where you can select a date and time that works for you. This study will involve playing an online computer game through Zoom where children interact with different mystery elements, such as shapes, animals, or countries, to learn different facts about each of them. Children will end the study by reading through a short story about children at school with the researcher and answering questions about what they learned in the story.

Curiosity can promote motivation, learning, and academic achievement; but many questions remain about how to support and leverage curiosity for academic success: What instructional methods and other classroom factors support student curiosity? How does curiosity vary across individuals and academic content areas, and over time? In order to assess children's curiosity, we need to be able to measure it. This study aims to understand ways that teachers can promote exploration and curiosity in classrooms by first focusing on how to measure children's curiosity. To assess this, we are interested in how children interact with and form questions about the mystery elements they see in the computer game.

25-30 minutes

As a small token of our appreciation, families will receive a $5 Amazon gift card (Amazon.com) for participation in the appointment session. In order to participate and receive compensation, children must be within the specified age range and a citizen of either the United States or Canada. Families will receive the gift card 1-3 business days after participation.