States of curiosity and interest enhance memory differently in adolescents and in children

Fandakova, Yana and Gruber, Matthias ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2754-0520 2021. States of curiosity and interest enhance memory differently in adolescents and in children. Developmental Science 24 (1) , e13005. 10.1111/desc.13005

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Abstract

Curiosity - broadly defined as the desire to acquire new information - enhances learning and memory in adults. In addition, interest in the information (i.e., when the information is processed) can also facilitate later memory. To date, it is not known how states of preinformation curiosity and post-information interest enhance memory in childhood and adolescence. We used a trivia paradigm in which children and adolescents (N = 60, 10–14 years) encoded trivia questions and answers associated with high or low curiosity. States of high pre-answer curiosity enhanced later memory for trivia answers in both children and adolescents. However, higher positive post-answer interest enhanced memory for trivia answers beyond the effects of curiosity more strongly in adolescents than in children. These results suggest that curiosity and interest have positive effects on learning and memory in childhood and adolescence, but might need to be harnessed in differential ways across child development to optimize learning.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	1363-755X
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	9 June 2020
Date of Acceptance:	28 May 2020
Last Modified:	27 Nov 2024 03:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/132276

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