Infants who display greater curiosity tend to develop higher cognitive abilities in childhood

A longitudinal study in the Netherlands found that infants who displayed greater curiosity at 8 months of age tended to have higher IQ scores at 3.5 years of age. However, this association was present only in infants who displayed the highest levels of curiosity (one-third of the most curious children). The research was published in Developmental Science.

During infancy, cognitive abilities develop rapidly. Infants very swiftly acquire basic knowledge about the world and develop various skills, from the motor skills needed to move their bodies and walk to the language skills that allow them to communicate with their caregivers and other people.

However, infants show measurable differences in cognitive abilities. They differ in abilities such as information processing speed, attention control, and learning efficiency. Longitudinal research indicates that these early differences are modest but reliable predictors of later cognitive abilities. Early attention regulation and processing speed have been linked to later executive functions and general intelligence. Memory and learning capacities in infancy are associated with later language development and academic skills.

Nevertheless, environmental factors such as caregiver responsiveness, stimulation, nutrition, and socioeconomic conditions strongly shape developmental trajectories. Brain plasticity in early childhood allows later experiences to amplify, compensate for, or impede the development of early cognitive tendencies.

Study author Eline R. de Boer and her colleagues examined whether variations in infants’ curiosity predicted cognitive abilities in childhood. These authors hypothesized that infants’ curiosity is associated with their intelligence in childhood and that infants who are more curious—i.e., more sensitive to information—show higher intelligence 3 years later.

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Study participants were 60 infants who were first enrolled in the study when they were 8 months old. The number of recruited infants was initially larger (90), but 30 were excluded or dropped out for various reasons. Fifty percent of them were girls. In 93% of cases, at least one of an infant’s caregivers had completed a form of higher education, and for 63% of the infants, both caregivers had higher education.

The study authors used a visual learning task to assess infants’ curiosity. In the task, a series of pictures were presented to the infant on a screen while the authors tracked where the infant looked. They combined the information about which pictures were displayed and where with information on where the infant was looking (and for how long) to derive an assessment of sensitivity to information for each infant. At 3.5 years of age, the children completed a standardized intelligence test: the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, Fourth Edition—Nederlandse bewerking.

Results showed that infants who displayed greater sensitivity to information—i.e., who showed greater curiosity—when they were 8 months old tended to have higher intelligence scores at 3.5 years of age. Further analysis revealed that the link between curiosity in infancy and later intelligence is not linear; rather, the association is strongest in infants who displayed the highest levels of curiosity.

“We show that early-existing individual differences in curiosity-driven learning play an important role in cognitive development and allow predicting differences in cognitive capacity over a time span of almost 3 years, supporting the direction modern theories are taking in emphasizing the role of infant curiosity in early learning. Benefiting from this discovery, these results suggest that finding ways to stimulate curiosity might be a promising avenue for boosting exploratory behavior and supporting learning in early childhood,” the study authors concluded.

The study contributes to scientific knowledge about early indicators of cognitive ability. However, the association between curiosity and later intelligence was present only in the one-third of children identified as most curious. In children who showed average or below-average curiosity, curiosity was not associated with later intelligence.

The paper, “Individual Differences in Infants’ Curiosity Are Linked to Cognitive Capacity in Early Childhood,” was authored by Eline R. de Boer, Francesco Poli, Marlene Meyer, Rogier B. Mars, and Sabine Hunnius.