Play, making and learning are increasingly understood in arts education and the wider social sciences as overlapping rather than distinct. This resonates with new materialist philosophies applied in a visual art context, which present the material encounter as a means of accessing information about the world, positioning it as a form of pedagogy. Despite this overlap, sculptural making practices are predominantly at odds with welcoming children’s creative contributions into the production of artworks. More knowledge is needed to understand how children may illuminate material pedagogies towards involving them in making processes.

Responding to this condition, this poster presents “The sculpture kit,” a collection of six materials: pipe cleaners, masking tape, tin foil, tissue paper, toilet roll and wool. It was developed collaboratively with a young child, my daughter, and then tested with larger groups of adults and children in public playgroup settings during an artist residency at In Situ, Pendle, Lancashire. The kit is a method to facilitate experiences of what I term “entangled making,” acknowledging materials’ pedagogical role towards observing exchanges of knowledge between children and adults, materials and humans.

Observations from the playgroups trace entanglements emerging from materials’ affordances: their capacities to wrap, stick, bend and to be imprinted. These physical capabilities initiate, influence and redirect flows of play between adults and children. A definition of entangled making is reached empirically, enfolding play, making and learning which foregrounds collaborative, materially-centric play and emerging objects as offering reciprocal learning opportunities for adults and children.

Work on children’s problem solving in physical cognition tasks tends to focus either on their difficulties innovating novel solutions (e.g. Beck et al., 2011) or their remarkable abilities to copy others (Nielsen & Blank, 2011). But one element of innovative problem solving that has not yet been explored is whether children are satisfied with a single solution or if they are curious to explore other possible solutions. Following a fruitful tradition in developmental and comparative psychology, we borrowed a task devised for non-human animals. The Multi-Access Box (Auersperg et al., 2011) contains a reward which can be obtained using several different techniques (using a stick to push off a plinth, dropping a ball to dislodge it, pulling a string positioned beneath it, for example). In the first stage, children (N = 42, 4–8-year-olds) were free to use any technique to retrieve the reward. 71% used one technique consistently for 8 trials. In contrast, 29% used a mix of techniques, ranging from 2 to 5 different techniques. In a second stage once children used a technique it was then blocked from them. Given 3 more attempts, only 3 younger children (4-6) failed to find any further solutions. Younger children found a further 2.5 techniques and older children found 2.7. We will discuss children’s motivation to identify multiple solutions and the potential impacts of individual differences and context. Overall, we hope to make a case for why problem solving needs to consider curiosity.

This poster will outline Jo Carruthers’ work on the concept of play as an important interlocutor for the study of curiosity and creativity. Following the publication of Sandscapes: Writing the British Seaside (2020), Carruthers has developed a philosophy of play, drawing on the writings of Friedrich Schiller and Jacques Ranière, to consider human responsiveness to more-than-human world through play. The poster will outline how play relates to the Curiosity project’s stage two taxonomy project of identifying specific curiosity facets. I propose Play as a vital aspect of curiosity research because it is foregrounds reciprocity and interaction, challenging curiosity’s focus on agency. The very metaphor of facets suggests a stable object from which exploration of the outside world is achieved. To date definitions of curiosity focus on the outward-projecting efforts of the child, ‘information seeking, exploratory behaviour, question-asking, and situational interest’.  Play challenges this emphasis to demonstrate the innact interactivity of activity / passivity and reception / projection, and acknowledges the necessarily situated and responsive nature of all human-world interactions. The poster will give details of the ‘Seaside Play’ project undertaken in 2025, taken to primary school in the Morecambe Bay area in the first instance.

Background: Public narratives around neurodiversity often remain reductive, despite growing visibility. Autism and ADHD frequently co-occur, yet empirical research exploring these neurotypes together, particularly in adulthood, remains limited. Both are linked to sensory sensitivities, diverse music preferences, and distinct cognitive profiles, but studying them separately may overlook shared and unique patterns. Aims: This project uses a transdiagnostic, data-driven approach to investigate how individuals with autistic and ADHD traits experience music in everyday life. It explores auditory sensitivity, emotional responses, and musical engagement to better understand cognition and behaviour across neurotypes. Methods: The project comprises three studies. Study 1combines questionnaires and cognitive tasks to explore music enjoyment and daily use across neurotypes. Study 2 will extend these findings by examining participants’ reward and curiosity during music listening. Study 3 will use electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain activity during music listening. Results: Preliminary analyses aim to identify participant clusters based on perceptual, cognitive, and musical profiles. Conclusion: Music offers a rich lens into neurodivergent cognition, allowing us to investigate how auditory perception shapes attention, memory, decision-making, epistemic behaviour and emotion. Findings may inform inclusive support strategies and foster a broader cultural shift toward acceptance and equity.

Background: Curiosity, the drive to know and learn, is a fundamental feature of human behaviour. Research suggests multiple motives for curiosity including uncertainty-driven (reducing gaps in knowledge), stochasticity-driven (seeking novelty), utility-driven, and learning-progress driven. Developmental findings suggest novelty- and uncertainty-driven curiosity develop differently with age. Yet, recent evidence indicates these two may be fundamental, age-independent strategies for information seeking. In this study, we investigate how motives (uncertainty or stochasticity) operate in children using a blurred picture paradigm. Methods: We tested 108 children, with 92 (Mage=8.12; SDage=2.16; age range 5-12) included for final analyses. Children were first pre-screened with 24 blurred images to assess prior knowledge. They then self-reported their curiosity about the same blurred image using a modified 5-point thermometer Likert scale. After each rating, they completed a forced-choice task to either reveal the blurred image or view a novel image. At the end, children reported on their choice preference and reasons. Physiological and trait measures were collected, although we report only the behavioural data. Results and Conclusion: Data analysis is undergoing; full results will be presented at the workshop. 

Choices to seek or avoid information about what is happening to others has vital implications for interpersonal relationships and addressing global challenges. Two reasons to seek information are whether it resolves uncertainty and has positive valence. Here we tested whether the same factors drive social information seeking. Two large online samples completed a task that measures choices to seek information about financial rewards for oneself or an anonymous other person (n1=238; n2=244). Information varied in uncertainty, valence, and the time required to seek it, but had no instrumental utility. Participants did choose to wait to find out about outcomes for others but were significantly less interested in this social information than information about rewards for themselves. While uncertainty and positive valence promoted information seeking for both recipients, these factors had a greater effect when outcomes affected the participant compared to someone else. The task showed good test-retest reliability and all results replicated across samples. Our results show that people value information about other people, and are willing to wait to seek it, depending on the same computational mechanisms that promote seeking information about rewards for oneself. However, lower sensitivity to valence and uncertainty about social outcomes lead to lower interest.

Trivia questions that elicit higher curiosity benefit encoding of the answers when they are revealed. Crucially, this curiosity memory benefit spills over to (unrelated) incidental information presented before the answer is revealed. While most previous work has demonstrated this spillover effect for incidentally-presented non-verbal stimuli (pictures faces or objects), we use the trivia paradigm to investigate whether high-curiosity states benefit memory for incidentally-presented Swahili words and English meanings (unrelated to the trivia questions). Across three experiments, we replicate the curiosity memory benefit for trivia answers (old/new recognition task [Exp1: N=126], free text recall [Exp2: N=75 & Exp3: N=72]). However, we did not find spillover effects for Swahili word meanings (written presentation [Exp1] auditory and pictorial [Exp2 & Exp3]) in immediate or delayed recognition tasks (24-72hr, Exp2 & Exp3); in fact, the effect of curiosity on immediate recognition for incidental information was negative (p = .039). In contrast, participants’ confidence that they knew the answer to the trivia question positively predicted their recognition of incidental information (p = .007). This suggests that spillover effects might be more nuanced or context-dependent, only spilling over to information which does not interfere with guesses for trivia answers (i.e., not to non-verbal information).

The MBC is an educator-led movement which aims to embed sustainability and place into everyday practice. Working with local teachers from Early Years to Further Education, we seek to develop innovative ways of enhancing the curriculum to ensure that learners develop positive relationships with place through a Head, Heart and Hands pedagogy. This involves encouraging wonder and curiosity within our local outdoor spaces through an inter-disciplinary and experiential approach. 

This poster showcases some of the successful projects which the MBC has delivered to date, including the curriculum co-designed resources, Eden Bear, Ripple Effects, local storytelling and the Green Passport. We focus on how this work engendered positive relationships with place by encouraging children and young people to ask questions, explore local issues and take community action. Underpinning our work is the fact that we focus on collaboration rather than competition, working together to achieve the shared aims of increasing the environmental and place-based knowledge of young people in our region. Morecambe Bay is a special place, geographically, culturally, historically and ecologically, and by using the Bay as a site for learning, we encourage care and appreciation of this. 

Curiosity is often assumed to shape aesthetic experiences. Artwork labels may influence how viewers perceive them, but museum-goers rarely control the type or amount of information they receive. To test the role of curiosity in aesthetic experiences, we manipulated participants’ agency over receiving information about artworks. 

We paired artworks with three categories of information: Artist, Meaning and Context. Participants provided initial liking and curiosity ratings on each painting. Paintings were then assigned to one of three agency conditions: No Agency (50% chance of receiving information from one category), Some Agency (choice to receive one piece of information from a random category), or Full Agency (complete control over whether, what, and how much information to see). After receiving 0–3 pieces of information (depending on condition and choices), participants re-rated each painting. 

Curiosity about artworks was strongly predicted by initial aesthetic responses. Critically, the positive effects of information depended strongly on agency, such that information enhanced aesthetic evaluations only when participants actively chose to receive it. Conversely, choosing not to view information led to more negative re-evaluations. These findings suggest that rewarding experiences can be enhanced when people are able to act on their curiosity and have implications for how museums and galleries present visitors with information. 

Previous research has found that in an uncertain environment, heightened attention towards both reliable and unreliable cues has been observed, demonstrating attentional exploration (e.g., Beesley et al., 2015), presumably to facilitate information-seeking. Contrarily, in a certain environment where humans are able to make consistently accurate predictions about upcoming events, humans selectively attend to reliable cues whilst suppressing attention towards unreliable cues, demonstrating attentional exploitation. These important findings were established through eye tracking studies, however, oculomotor movement is a relatively low motor-cost form of exploration compared to those that require additional manual coordination, such as reaching. Visual search studies have found that humans can weigh against the different anticipated costs of a behaviour (e.g., motor cost and task difficulty) to optimise search efficiency (Draschkow et al., 2021; Kibbe & Kowler, 2011). Therefore, we seek to investigate whether motor cost affects attentional trade-offs within associative learning under uncertainty. Participants were presented with either deterministic (certain) or probabilistic (uncertain) associative relationships and motor cost was manipulated through the effort required to sample their environment. I will present preliminary data that provide insights into how motor cost impacts exploration and learning under uncertainty.

REFERENCES:

Beesley, T., Nguyen, K. P., Pearson, D., & Le Pelley, M. E. (2015). Uncertainty and predictiveness determine attention to cues during human associative learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68(11), 2175–2199. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2015.1009919 

Draschkow, D., Kallmayer, M., & Nobre, A. C. (2021). When Natural Behavior Engages Working Memory. Current Biology, 31(4), 869-874.e5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.11.013 

Kibbe, M. M., & Kowler, E. (2011). Visual search for category sets: Tradeoffs between exploration and memory. Journal of Vision, 11(3), 14. https://doi.org/10.1167/11.3.14 

There is evidence that humans pay more attention to uncertain than certain cues (Beesley et al., 2015). Strikingly, this higher attention does not promote better learning with these cues (Easdale et al., 2019; Torrent-Rodas et al., 2023). This finding is problematic for the view that higher attention promotes better cue processing. Here we present a series of experiments in which the recognition memory of the cues is tested as a proxy for cue processing, using a recognition memory test, after training with the discrimination AX-O1, AY-O1, BX-O2, BY-O2. This design allows us to manipulate both predictiveness and uncertainty within the same experiment.  Predictiveness is manipulated within-subjects: cues A and B are predictive of the outcome, whereas cues X and Y are non-predictive. Uncertainty is manipulated by varying, between-subjects, the proportion of trials in which predictive cues are followed by their respective outcomes: p = 1 for subjects that received certain training and p = .8 for uncertain training. Furthermore, the expectancy of uncertainty is manipulated, also between-subjects, by varying the moment in training that the uncertain contingencies are introduced. Here we present the results of these manipulations and discuss them in the light of attentional theories of associative learning. 

Beesley, T., Nguyen, K. P., Pearson, D., & Le Pelley, M. E. (2015). Uncertainty and predictiveness determine attention to cues during human associative learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68, 2175–2199.  

Easdale, L. C., Le Pelley, M. E., & Beesley, T. (2019). The onset of uncertainty facilitates the learning of new associations by increasing attention to cues. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72, 193–208.  

Torrents-Rodas, D., Koenig, S., Uengoer, M., & Lachnit, H. (2023). The effect of prediction error on overt attention and learning in humans. Behavioural Processes, 206, 104843. 

Personalized stories about others’ life experiences are omnipresent in modern media, yet we know little about what drives people to engage with such narratives. Across two studies (N = 596 UK adults), we investigated how curiosity for others’ experiences is driven by valence (positive versus negative life event) and cultural distance (experience from someone from a culturally close versus distant country). In Study 1, participants reported greater curiosity for negative stories, especially when the protagonist was culturally close. Study 2 replicated this pre-registered interaction and explored underlying motives. Structural equation modelling revealed that negative stories elicited more curiosity due to greater anticipated insight. While counterintuitive at first sight, higher curiosity was additionally mediated through higher distress, despite lower expected enjoyment of negative stories. These findings speak to a possible inverted u-relationship between negative affect and curiosity and have implications for fostering empathy and meaningful engagement in media and public discourse.

Curiosity positively impacts information retention, yet how different facets of the curiosity experience shape this positive learning relationship remains unclear. Curiosity is described as a construct encompassing multiple dimensions, distinguishing between qualitatively different curiosity experiences such as interest- versus deprivation-type states, and between different forms of engagement, such as broad versus deep curiosity. While these distinctions are well established, their specific roles in learning require a more systematic examination. We will recruit 220–300 adults to complete a trivia paradigm designed to elicit curiosity. For each question, participants will rate their curiosity (breadth) and positive and negative affect (interest vs. deprivation). After answer presentation, they can either seek additional information (depth) or continue. Recall of trivia answers will be assessed 1–2 weeks later. We predict that higher state curiosity will improve memory recall, replicating prior findings. Exploratory analyses will test interactions among curiosity dimensions: whether breadth and depth jointly predict stronger learning, and how positive versus negative affect moderates these effects. This study aims to advance understanding of how multidimensional curiosity contributes to learning outcomes.

Previous research has usefully situated curiosity within a reward-learning framework, in which the intrinsic pleasure of knowing is rewarding in the same way as food or money. However, estimating the reward value of information is not straightforward. An assumption of reward-learning frameworks is that people can accurately predict the expected value of rewards, but people tend to overestimate the value of extrinsic rewards and underestimate intrinsic ones. We investigated how motivated behaviour for information rewards differs from that for monetary rewards using a volatile reward learning task. Cues presented on each trial indicated the type (money/trivia) and magnitude of a potential reward. Participants attempted to learn which of two visual stimuli was most likely to lead to the available reward, while the mappings between stimuli and outcomes changed over time. Overall accuracy was similar between conditions: participants learned similarly about the tendency of response-outcome contingencies for money and trivia rewards. However, they updated their beliefs about volatility significantly faster in the trivia condition, meaning that they were more likely to attribute both wins and losses to changes in stimulus reward contingencies. These findings suggest that decision-making is more stochastic for information rewards, which may reflect a greater tendency to engage in exploratory behaviour. 

Curiosity is a key driver of information seeking and learning, beginning in early childhood. Yet, research on children’s curiosity remains fragmented (Grossnickle, 2016), and there is a lack of standardized, validated tools that reflect its multifaceted nature (Jirout et al., 2024). Our study aims to develop a comprehensive toolkit to assess individual differences in curiosity among children aged 7–11 years. We will target   theoretically derived curiosity facets (e.g., epistemic, perceptual, interpersonal, breadth, depth), capturing both the curiosity-driven processes and children’s explicit valuation of curiosity through behavioural tasks and self-report measures. Measure selection will be guided by a scoping review of existing measures (Prenevost et al., 2024). Validation of the Curiosity Battery will proceed in two phases to evaluate psychometric properties (Phase 1) and predictive validity (Phase 2). In Phase 1, we will recruit 600 children to assess reliability and construct validity, and a separate sample of 200 to examine test-retest reliability. Phase 2 will be a longitudinal study of 1,200 children to determine whether the curiosity battery predicts academic achievement and well-being. Altogether, the study will lay the groundwork for advancing curiosity as a measurable and impactful educational target.

References

Grossnickle, E. M. (2016). Disentangling Curiosity: Dimensionality, Definitions, and Distinctions from Interest in Educational Contexts. Educational Psychology Review, 28(1), 23–60. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-014-9294-y 

Jirout, J. J., Evans, N. S., & Son, L. K. (2024). Curiosity in children across ages and contexts. Nature Reviews Psychology, 3(9), 622–635. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00346-5 

Prenevost, M. H., FitzGibbon, L., & Bazhydai, M. (2024). Operationalization of Curiosity in Childhood: A Scoping Review. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/N8VT5 

We performed two studies aiming to integrate different research lines on children’s curiosity-driven learning. Therefore, we adapted the Trivia paradigm to investigate not only the relation between children’s state curiosity and memory performance, but also their desire to explore. Additionally, we examined the role of intelligence and perceived prior knowledge in the curiosity-recall relation. Participants were 10- to 12-year-olds (Study 1, N=32; Study 2, N=48). In the Trivia paradigm, participants learn answers to trivia questions for which they have high and low curiosity, and subsequently recall is tested. Incidental information is presented together with trivia facts, and its recognition is tested as well. Results of both studies demonstrated that children memorized high-curiosity trivia facts better than low-curiosity trivia facts, but there was no curiosity effect for recognition of incidental information. Additionally, curiosity was positively related to children’s desire to further explore the concerning topic. Results regarding the moderating role of intelligence were mixed. Last, only in Study 1 the relation between curiosity and recall held when taking into account prior knowledge, highlighting the importance of considering prior knowledge in the Trivia paradigm. For educational practice, the results reinforce the notion of curiosity being a main driver of children’s learning.

The ability to make and use tools is a critical element of human technological progress, yet we know very little about its development. Most children, across diverse populations, are poor at solving tool innovation tasks until mid-late childhood.

It has been proposed that the development of tool innovation requires a suite of cognitive processes – creativity, planning, causal and spatial reasoning, and executive functions – the developmental trajectory of which coincides with that of tool innovation. Educational access and experiences markedly impact these cognitive processes and thus may also affect the development of tool innovation. To investigate the involvement of these factors, we will collect data from eight urban populations, with diverse cultural and educational profiles, using a battery of cognitive tasks. We aim to determine whether individual differences in cognitive processes explain the developmental trajectory of 5-10-year-old children’s performance on innovation tasks (e.g., the hook task). Moreover, we will examine the impact of cultural variation in participation in formal education, and markers of school quality, on the development of tool innovation and cognitive process across cultures with age.

Our large-scale project is underway, and we aim to collect data from 150 children per study site (N=1200). We are compiling our test battery and extensively piloting cognitive tasks with a focus on those that are simple to administer and score, validated for our age range, and used cross-culturally.

We predict that across populations, individual differences in performance on cognitive measures will correlate with age-related improvements on tool innovation tasks and that better-quality education will positively correlate with tool innovation and cognitive task performance.

This study will examine whether infants and toddlers seek to resolve curiosity. Previous research has demonstrated that adults (Nicki, 1970) seek to resolve their curiosity, induced by blurred images, but these curiosity resolution behaviours have not been replicated in infancy research (Chen et al., 2022).

The current study will stimulate children’s curiosity by presenting them with a blurred object on screen. Using gaze contingency, they will choose what they see next: the clear resolution of the previously blurred object or a clear new object. Trait curiosity will also be examined using a parental report questionnaire (Altmann et al., 2025). 

We predict toddlers will choose to perceive clear resolution images more than clear new images, significantly more than infants. Furthermore, that infants and toddlers will look longer at clear new images than clear resolution images, with toddlers’ looking times being significantly shorter than infants’. We also predict toddlers will exhibit more patterns in their exploratory behaviour, compared to infants. 

Preliminary findings are presented. To analyse the data, we compare how many times children ‘trigger’ the presentation of clear resolution versus clear new images and how long they look at each image type. We also measure patterns of their choices across trials. 

References

Altmann, E. C., Bazhydai, M., Karadag, D., & Westermann, G. (2025). The Infant and Toddler Curiosity Questionnaire: A validated caregiver-report measure of curiosity in children from 5 to 24 months. Infancy, 30(1), Article 1. https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/226951/ 

Chen, X., Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2022). Curiosity enhances incidental object encoding in 8-month-old infants. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 223, 105508–105508. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105508   

Nicki, R. M. (1970). The reinforcing effect of uncertainty reduction on a human operant. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 24, 389-. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0082875 

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is commonly described in terms of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity, yet lived experience and emerging research also highlight strengths related to hypercuriosity, novelty-seeking and exploratory drive. This study investigates how self-reported ADHD traits relate to trait curiosity in a broad UK adult sample. Participants (aged 18+, UK residents, fluent in English) completed an anonymous online survey including the 18-item Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS-v1.1) and the 10-item Curiosity and Exploration Inventory-II (CEI-II), alongside brief demographic and neurodiversity questions. Planned analyses include correlations and multiple regression models assessing associations between ASRS total and subscale scores and CEI-II dimensions, with exploratory comparisons by ADHD diagnosis status. By characterising the relationship between ADHD traits and curiosity, this study aims to contribute to a more balanced understanding of ADHD and to inform inclusive approaches in education and the workplace.