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 acrossstudies, 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 andthe other on information gain – by observing children’s exploration as it unfolded during freeplay, moving beyond the computerized and controlled settings in which this concept was studiedin the past. We created a setting that allowed 56 3.5-year-old children to interact freely withtheir environment, 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 showed thatperformance-based and information-based learning progress were weakly correlated and thatboth forms contributed to children’s exploration behaviour. However, information-basedlearning progress predicted children’s play engagement only for one of the three toys. Overall,we demonstrate that performance increase and information gain capture distinct aspects oflearning progress that both guide children’s exploration behaviour. This study marks animportant step towards research investigating the mechanisms underlying children’sexploration behaviour in more naturalistic settings.