Guiding Curiosity: How Learning Progress Shapes Young Children’s Exploration of New Toys

Previous research has shown that children are drawn to environments that offer learningprogress. However, the computational implementation of learning progress varied across thesestudies, potentially overshadowing that there might be two distinct processes at work. In thisstudy, we examined two forms of learning progress – one based on performance increase andanother on information gain – by observing children’s exploration as it unfolds during freeplay, moving beyond the computerized and controlled settings in which this concept wasstudied in the past. We created a setting that allowed 56 3½-year-old children to play freelyand interactively, but at the same time allowed us to model their behaviour in a fine-grainedfashion. Specifically, we developed three novel toys and estimated the degree to which theirplay engagement was predicted by the amount of learning progress they made, leveraging thecontributions of two existing computational accounts of learning progress. Results showedthat performance-based and information-based learning progress were weakly correlated andthat both forms contributed to children’s exploration behaviour. However, information-basedlearning progress predicted children’s play engagement only in one of the three toys. Overall,we demonstrate that learning progress based on performance increase and information gaincapture distinct aspects of learning progress that both guide children’s exploration behaviour.This study marks an important step towards research investigating children’s explorationbehaviour in even more naturalistic settings, beyond the lab.