Curiosity and Anxiety as Motivational Determinants of Cognitive Development

Clemens Trudewind

The period between the third and the seventh year of life is an important transitional phase for cognitive and motivational development. The basis for acquiring and structuring domain-specific knowledge is formed. Researchers have intensively examined the development of strategies, social cognitions, metacognitions, capabilities of self-regulation, planning, problem solving and first operational systems. In contrast, the development of motive systems in this stage has been dealt with in a much poorer manner. Even the question of the motivational basis of developmental change in the different cognitive domains is widely overlooked. The myth of the total social determination of child development makes the competent adult responsible for instructing and motivating in the “zone of proximal development.” So the recourse to the “active organism” becomes mere lip service because the specific driving and inhibitory forces for the child’s self-determined activity have seldom been discussed and even more seldom been systematically studied.

Since the 1950s curiosity and exploratory behavior have been regarded as components in an independent behavioral system built in the course of evolution. In many developmental theories curiosity is seen as a central explanatory construct for cognitive developmental changes (Berg & Sternberg, 1985; Bowlby, 1969; Case, 1984, 1985; E. Gibson, 1988; J. Gibson, 1979; Piaget, 1952, 1972), so it is more astonishing that up to now there has been so little empirical evidence for the relationship between the strength of the curiosity disposition and the development of cognitive competencies. One reason for that surely is the difficulty in measuring individual differences in the structure and strength of the curiosity motive; another is Piaget’s dictum that affectivemotivational and cognitive processes are inseparably connected (Piaget, 1972).

However, Berg and Sternberg (1985) discussed the relationship of curiosity and cognitive development in an extensive review article. They presented empirical data about the relationship between reactions to novel stimuli and situations in infancy and early childhood and measures of intelligence in later developmental periods. They then called into question the widely accepted assumption that the development of intelligence is discontinuous in the first years of life and that interindividual differences in this phase are unstable. They interpreted the data as proof that the child’s reaction to novelty is not only a continuous condition of intellectual performance but also a constant condition for individual differences in cognitive development. The interest in novelty and the ability to deal with it competently continue to be integral components of individual differences in intelligence over the whole life span. Berg and Sternberg (1985) distinguished two components in the process of dealing with novelty:

(1) A motivational component representing the affective, energizing aspect of novelty. This component is expressed by interest in, curiosity for, and preference for new stimuli, new tasks, and new aspects of the environment.

(2) A cognitive or information-extraction component that is responsible for the isolation, evaluation, and acquisition of relevant information and its assimilation to earlier experiences.

According to this view, the significance of a strong disposition towards curiosity for cognitive development is due to the stronger preference curious children have for new stimuli or situations. Curious children also develop more strategies of information extraction, focus their attention unerringly on informative aspects of situations, and attempt to explore these situations by active manipulation. Furthermore, they show higher persistence when searching for assimilative information than less curious children. Therefore, the relationship between the strength of the curious motivation and intellectual competence should become obvious in situations in which the child has to discover the relevance of numerous unfamiliar elements for problem solving. One important motivational tendency that perhaps moderates the relationships between curiosity disposition and learning by experiences, has not been discussed by Berg and Sternberg (1985). This is the anxiety disposition. It has been argued from an ethological point of view that a behavioral system that focuses on exploring and approaching new stimuli and situations has adaptive advantages only if this system is inhibited by an antagonistic system that buffers or delays an uncontrolled approach to unknown, potentially risky objects (Hinde, 1966). W. James (1890) had already conceptualized neophobia, the fear of novelty, as such a system.

In the following passage the results of some studies will be discussed, in which the relationship between curiosity motive and anxiety motive on the one hand, and manifest exploratory behavior and the ability to remember and solve problems on the other, were examined. These studies are part of the motivational and developmental psychological research program of our research group at the Ruhr University at Bochum.

Measurement of Curiosity and Anxiety Disposition in Preschool Children

The problem of the functional relationships between curiosity and anxiety dispositions on the one hand, and cognitive development on the other, can only be solved if it is possible to measure individual differences in the strength and structures of the two motives. However, motives as dispositional variables are not observable but can only be derived from the manifest motivated behavior. To be able to derive the differences in the strength of motives from differences in observable anxious and exploratory behavior in a controlled assessment situation one must assume that the incentive conditions for the motives in question are similar for all individuals. To derive strength of motives from observed behavior in everyday situations one has to take care that a representative sample of the curiosity- or anxiety-instigating situations is chosen (cf. Trudewind & Schneider, 1994). As such conditions are realizable only to limited extent, we have developed three methods of measuring the curiosity motive and two methods of measuring the anxiety disposition: a parents’ questionnaire for each motive (Trudewind, Matip, & Berg, 1992; Trudewind & Schneider, 1994), a puppet show-technique with systematic observations of the child’s exploratory behavior (Lange, Massie, & Neuhaus, 1990; Trudewind & Schneider, 1994), a checklist for systematic observation of anxious behavior in free-play situations in nursery school (Lugt-Tappeser & Schneider, 1986), and a test battery to encode the exploratory behavior in standardized instigation of the curiosity motive by new objects (Schneider, Trudewind, Mackowiak, & Hungerige, 1993).

The parents’ questionnaire is based on the registration of exploratory behavior in ecologically key situations for exploration at home. Parents had to judge on a 4-point Lickert scale the typicalness of the described curiosity behavior for the assessed child in these age-specific everyday situations. Three scales can be derived by factor analysis from the 35 items. The scales are moderately correlated and can, therefore, be combined to a total score for overall curiosity. But each scale also measures specific components of the curiosity motive.

The first scale was interpreted as the epistemic curiosity scale. The behaviors specified here indicate a desire to gain insight, knowledge, and understanding (e.g., “My child always asks how things work”). The second scale represents behaviors of information gathering via looking, manipulation, and trial-and-error behaviors (e.g., “Very often my child refuses to pass a building site and insists on watching everything”). It was called the perceptive and manipulative curiosity scale. The third scale measures tendencies to look for interesting, exceptional, or surprising events and for hidden objects and secrets (e.g., “When I return from shopping, my child immediately wants to see what is in the shopping bag”). This scale represents searching for stimulating events. The first two scales represent facets of specific curiosity, the last one also measures aspects of diversive curiosity (Berlyne, 1960) or sensationseeking tendency (Zuckerman, Kolin, Price, & Zoob, 1964).

To measure anxiety disposition we also constructed a parents’ questionnaire based on the same principles as the curiosity questionnaire. It also represents three scales that can be combined to a total score for the strength of the anxiety motive.

The first scale of the anxiety questionnaire measures social anxiety and shyness. The behaviors specified here indicate fear, withdrawal, and behavior inhibition in social situations (e.g., “My child often is not able to utter a sound for greeting an adult”). The second scale represents passive or avoidance behavior in situations with a risk of physical harm (e.g., “My child very seldom climbs to the top of a climbing frame”). The scale was named fear of physical impairment. The third scale indicates cognitive...