What can children teach us about the neuroscience of curiosity?

School children are helping neuroscientists to understand the science behind curiosity, and how it can impact learning and memory.

Researchers and science educators from Cardiff University have paired with five primary schools across the city to investigate children’s inquisitive nature and find out what this can teach us about learning and how it can shape curiosity-led learning in schools.

Children aged 7-10 years old from across Cardiff, worked with scientists from the University’s School of Psychology and Science Made Simple – a social enterprise that is helping make science enriching, exciting and accessible to all -  to decide what makes them most curious. They developed their own research projects around what interests them and  presented them at an awards ceremony at Techniquest Science Centre on July 9^th.

Led by Dr Matthias Gruber, from the School of Psychology, the project builds on previous research that highlighted how different the curiosity of children is compared to teenagers and adults.

“Because of the unique curiosity that children have, the project focused on curiosity in children aged 7 to 10-year-olds, exploring how curiosity can be used to benefit learning in the classroom.

“We have brought together science communicators, neuroscientists, teachers and their pupils, collaborating and learning from each other,” said Dr Gruber.

The project was funded by the Wellcome Trust and will make recommendations about ways to integrate curiosity-led learning into the new Welsh Curriculum.

The researchers hope that the findings from this project will add to knowledge in the field of education and support the new Welsh curriculum. The materials that have been developed during the project will be available for future use when implementing curiosity-based learning in the classroom.

Dr Ellen O'Donoghue, Researcher at Cardiff University, said:  "I learned a lot from the project, and it was especially useful to think about the different ways that curiosity is experienced in the lab and in the classroom. In the lab, we can reliably show that curiosity enhances learning – but, translating that to the real world is a lot harder. It was really useful to see first-hand how curiosity shapes classroom learning, and what challenges students and teachers face."

Dr Tamas Foldes, Researcher at Cardiff University, said: "Doing a PhD in science typically involves focusing on a niche that only a few find interesting, but talking to the kids as part of the Curious Brain project reminded me what kind of questions originally got me interested in studying human learning and memory. I can only hope the kids gained as much from the experience as I did."