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Cited by 89Psychological and Educational Research StudiesChild and Animal Learning DevelopmentScience Education and Pedagogy

Curiosity as a Metacognitive Feeling

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Goupil, Louise, Proust, Joëlle·2023·Cognition
DOI 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105325
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Abstract

Curious information-seeking is known to be a key driver for learning, but characterizing this important psychological phenomenon remains a challenge. In this article, we argue that solving this challenge requires qualifying the relationships between metacognition and curiosity. The idea that curiosity is a metacognitive competence has been resisted: researchers have assumed both that young children and non-human animals can be genuinely curious, and that metacognition requires conceptual and culturally situated resources that are unavailable to young children and non-human animals. Here, we argue that this resistance is unwarranted given accumulating evidence that metacognition can be deployed procedurally, and we defend the view that curiosity is a metacognitive feeling. Our metacognitive view singles out two monitoring steps as a triggering condition for curiosity: evaluating one's own informational needs, and predicting the likelihood that explorations of the proximate environment afford significant information gains. We review empirical evidence and computational models of curiosity, and show that they fit well with this metacognitive account, while on the contrary, they remain difficult to explain by a competing account according to which curiosity is a basic attitude of questioning. Finally, we propose a new way to construe the relationships between curiosity and the human-specific communicative practice of questioning, discuss the issue of how children may learn to express their curiosity through interactions with others, and conclude by briefly exploring the implications of our proposal for educational practices.

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  • According to self-determination theory, competence, autonomy and relatedness are fundamental factors to promote for more efficient educational trainings.

    “following the self-determination theory [48, 17], these are fundamental factors to promote for more efficient educational trainings.”

    From GPT-3-Driven Pedagogical Agents to Train Children’s Curious Question-Asking Skills (2024) · cites this paper as [17]

  • Lack of control over the task might alter children's sense of autonomy and competency, which are central factors for motivation and curiosity according to self-determination theory.

    “this lack of control over the task might also alter with children's sense of autonomy and competency, which are central factors for motivation and curiosity according to the Self-Determination Theory( [48], [17]).”

    From GPT-3-Driven Pedagogical Agents to Train Children’s Curious Question-Asking Skills (2024) · cites this paper as [17]

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Authors
Goupil, L., & Proust, J.
Affiliations
  • Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
  • Institut Jean Nicod (FR)
Corresponding author
Goupil, Louise
ORCID
Venue
Cognition
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2023-02
Volume
231
Pages
105325
ISSN
0010-0277 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105325
OpenAlex
W4283687550
Cited by
89
References
19
Citations by year
2026: 15 · 2025: 36 · 2024: 29 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 1
FWCI
2.69
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Cognition (acceptedVersion)
  • SSRN Electronic Journal (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
  • PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, public-domain)
Funders
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-17-EURE-, ANR-17-EURE-0017, ANR-17)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Psychological and Educational Research Studies
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
  • Social Sciences › Education › Science Education and Pedagogy
Keywords
curiosity, metacognition, information seeking, information needs, questioning, children's curiosity, teaching practice
MeSH terms
Metacognition, Animals, Child, Preschool, Communication, Emotions, Exploratory Behavior, Humans, Learning

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