{"id":97,"date":"2016-06-14T13:46:38","date_gmt":"2016-06-14T13:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/curiosity\/?page_id=97"},"modified":"2016-11-11T21:04:01","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T21:04:01","slug":"why-curiosity","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/curiosity\/why-curiosity\/","title":{"rendered":"Why curiosity?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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From http:\/\/www.thebump.com\/a\/how-to-raise-a-happy-baby<\/p><\/div>\n

Developmental psychology is amazing!\u00a0For decades, researchers have designed clever experiments that tell us lots about what\u00a0helps babies and toddlers learn.<\/p>\n

For example, we know that from just 3 months babies can keep track of\u00a0what items look like in order to group them into categories<\/a>, and that hearing a new word for a new set of objects affects how long 10-month-old babies spend looking at these objects<\/a>. We also know that teaching toddlers to pay attention to\u00a0objects’ shape gives their early word learning a boost, as\u00a0does showing them lots of different examples of\u00a0the same thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That’s not all – far from it! Thanks to developmental\u00a0research we know a huge amount about\u00a0what\u00a0babies see and hear helps – or hinders – learning. If you’d like to find out more about classic and cutting-edge developmental research, colleagues\u00a0from Lancaster University<\/a> in the ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development<\/a> have written a\u00a0handy summary<\/a>.
\n\"babybuilding\"The Curiosity Project is different, though. Traditionally, developmental research has been\u00a0carried out in carefully-designed\u00a0environments in which the researcher chose what babies saw and touched, and for how long. As all parents know, though, babies don’t learn like this! They grow up in a colourful, exciting, noisy world, and most importantly, choose what they play with based on their own curiosity.\u00a0However, only very recently have researchers discovered that how babies see the world is very different to how adults do; for example, because they have shorter arms relative to their body size than adults do, the objects\u00a0they hold\u00a0appear relatively much bigger than they do to adults.\u00a0If we want to understand how babies learn, then, we need to understand the world from their perspective (learn more here)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the Curiosity Project we’ll be using state-of-the-art\u00a0technology\u00a0to investigate\u00a0what babies and toddlers see when they’re allowed to\u00a0explore the world based on their own curiosity. We’re also interested in\u00a0how this learning in the real\u00a0world relates to their early language learning.\u00a0Results will tell us\u00a0for the first time\u00a0how\u00a0babies drive their own development, how they shape their own learning opportunities, and what we can do to\u00a0give our children the best possible\u00a0opportunities for learning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Developmental psychology is amazing!\u00a0For decades, researchers have designed clever experiments that tell us lots about what\u00a0helps babies and toddlers learn. For example, we know that from just 3 months babies can keep track of\u00a0what items look like in order to group them into categories, and that hearing a new word for a new set of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":380,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-97","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P9rqQW-1z","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/curiosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/curiosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/curiosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/curiosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/380"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/curiosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/curiosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/97\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":433,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/curiosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/97\/revisions\/433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/curiosity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}