Children are like little learning machines. In the first years of life, they learn so much and so efficiently. Understanding children’s rapid and efficient learning abilities has been the core focus in developmental science for decades. One explanation for these astonishing learning abilities is that children are curious from an early age, and that their curiosity drives their exploration and learning. Curiosity is commonly understood as an intrinsically motivated inclination to seek information. Because it is an internal state that is not directly observable, studying it in infants and preschool-aged children is particularly challenging. As a consequence, different approaches are in use to conceptualize and study curiosity. In this thesis, I employed two complementary approaches to investigate different aspects of curiosity in early childhood, ranging from computations to behaviours.
In the first approach, I harnessed computational models to unravel the cognitive processes underlying curiosity-driven behaviours, focusing on the Learning Progress hypothesis that states that learning itself is intrinsically rewarding, and as such, motivates children to explore. In the second approach, I examined behavioural manifestations of curiosity more broadly and introduced and validated two caregiver-reported questionnaires that capture early manifestations of curiosity and individual differences therein. Together, the findings and the measurement tools created in this thesis (experimental toys and the questionnaires) advance not only our understanding of curiosity in early childhood but also offer practical avenues for future research to study curiosity in more naturalistic settings and to identify factors that can promote curiosity in early childhood, while also considering individual differences.
Eline de Boer earned a BSc in Psychology (Honours Program) from Utrecht University. She completed an MSc with honours in the Research Master Clinical & Developmental Psychopathology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a second MSc in Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology and obtained her Basisaantekening Psychodiagnostiek (BAPD), qualifying her to conduct psychological assessments in children. Throughout her studies, she worked as a research assistant at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and volunteered at Stichting De Kindertelefoon. From October 2021 to September 2025, Eline pursued a PhD at the Donders Center for Cognition. Her doctoral project focused on curiosity, learning and cognitive development in early childhood, and included (combinations of) computational and behavioural approaches. Since November 2025, Eline has been working as a scientific researcher at the Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek- en Datacentrum (WODC), Ministry of Justice and Security, where she studies policies and interventions addressing domestic violence and child abuse.