Author: Marina Bazhydai

We are off to a great start of the 5- year project to develop a new battery of measures of curiosity for school children! The project is run by Marina as PI and Dr Lily FitzGibbon of Stirling University as Co-I, with Dr Mathilde Prenevost leading the work as a postdoctoral researcher.

This project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant and it aims to synthesize the theoretical and methodological approaches to curiosity in childhood and use this integrative perspective to systematically address the paucity and heterogeneity of psychological measurements of curiosity in school age (7-11 year old) children. The resulting validated multidimensional assessment battery will be made available for use by researchers and educators. Longitudinal studies will be undertaken to investigate the relationship between different facets of curiosity with children’s academic achievement and psychological well-being outcomes.

The aims and aspirations of the project are summarised in this news article.

The Lancaster Evaluation Group (LEG) are a cross-institutional and interdisciplinary team of researchers and practitioners based at Lancaster University, who have come together through a common interest in evaluative practice https://lancasterevaluationgroup.uk/. Marina co-founded the group with the kick-off Cross-Faculty Catalyst fund awarded by Lancaster University to help develop rigorous evaluation tools, in particular for the education section. The group has led a series of workshops and seminars which can be accessed by joining the team: https://lancasterevaluationgroup.uk/leg-blog

Congratulations to Malcolm on his first authored publication from his PhD – a completed Registered Report now available at the Royal Society Open Science! It’s title is: Does implicit mentalizing involve the representation of others’ mental state content? Examining domain-specificity with an adapted Joint Simon task. 

Marina co-authored two publications as part of the ManyManys network aiming to develop cross-species cognitive tasks and approaches to better understand cognitive development. The papers are available here: Challenges and Promises of Big Team Comparative Cognition and Comparative Cognition Needs Big Team Science: How Large-Scale Collaborations Will Unlock the Future of the Field.

Marina, Elena and Didar presented at the International Congress of Infant Studies held in Glasgow this year. Elena and Didar presented several posters on their research from PhD work. Elena and Marina also presented two research studies on infant curiosity in the organised symposium: In the driver’s seat of development.

Marina has been working with the Morecambe Bay Curriculum (MBC) to create school resources highlighting sustainability, nature-based and place-based learning. A news article outlining this work is available here.

The resources are available through free MBC membership – you can view the examples and sign up here: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/morecambe-bay-curriculum/resources/

The first phase of the project culminated in a full-day conference on July 5, 2024. Marina participated in the panel discussion: Linking sustainability and place into the curriculum: Panel Discussion between teachers and academics focused on these themes, and led a teacher-focused workshop, entitled: Promoting children’s curiosity, wonder and creativity through engagement with nature – evidence from psychological science and innovative education.

Didar Karadag and Elena Altmann completed their respective PhDs, passing their vivas with flying colours. We wish them exciting new adventures in their new post-doctoral roles!

Our first Registered Report – Stage 2 – led by Didar is now out in Developmental Science.

Karadag, D., Bazhydai, M., & Westermann, G. (2024). Toddlers do not preferentially transmit generalizable information to others. Developmental Science, e13479. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13479

We found that 2-year-olds do not show a preference to share information that is generalisable over specific/non-generalisable with a person who presented themselves as not knowledgeable.

We designed a study where children were shown novel boxes where different buttons led to separate outcomes: one type triggered a generalisable outcome across boxes (e.g., three different tunes in Boxes 1, 2, and 3) and the other type, a non-generalisable outcome across boxes as defined by the status at start-up of the device.

After learning about the functions of the toys, children could encode which buttons were or were not leading to the generalisable outcomes. An adult who was not present during the learning phase then entered the room and asked the child to be taught about these boxes.

Contrary to our expectation, children were at chance with sharing the functions of the boxes, thus, unlike older children from previous literature, they did not show the early preference for sharing generalisable information.

Marina has been awarded a 5-year Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant: “Curiosity Battery: Developing a new toolkit for primary school children”. Working with a Co-I at Stirling University, Dr Lily Fitzgibbon, and a team comprising a postdoc and two PhD researchers, we will develop and validate a multidimensional assessment battery of curiosity in primary-school-age children, and use it in longitudinal studies examining children’s academic achievement and psychological well-being. Stayed tuned for commencement of this exciting work in September 2024!

Elena, Didar, Malcolm and Marina presented the current work in progress at the Lancaster International Conference on Infant and Early Child Development (LCICD), which we have all co-organised as well. We featured our work on curiosity and information transmission in children: the full details are available in the programme here: https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/lcicd/files/2023/08/LCICD2023-Abstract-Booklet-3.pdf