The quickest way to teach our children something is to show them. It’s efficient, and it’s effective.

But in some circumstances it may not be the best way to teach children. Particularly if we want them to explore and develop their curiosity and love of learning.

A fascinating new study has just been published in the journal Cognition. It tested how the way we teach things to our children influences the way they explore... and it seems that our explicit instruction makes children less likely to engage in spontaneous exploration and discovery.

Why?

In short, if a parent or teacher shows a child one thing about how a toy works and then stops the child is likely to say “Well, that’s all there is to know about that toy.” And the exploration stops.

The study

To study this phenomenon, the researchers built an original toy. The toy was designed as an appealing tangle of coloured tubes, and it had four different functions. Children could pull on a yellow tube and the toy would squeak; they could press a button and a blue tube would light up; touch a pad to hear different music notes; or look through a black tube to see a reversed mirror image of their face.

The experimenters then took the toy to Boston's Museum of Science, where they recruited 85 preschool-age children to interact with the toy under one of four conditions.

In the pedagogical condition, the experimenter said, "Look at my toy! This is how my toy works," and demonstrated the squeak function twice (but made no mention of the other functions). This was to provide simple instruction based on just one function.

The interrupted condition was identical to the pedagogical condition, except that immediately after the squeak demonstration the experimenter interrupted herself, saying, "I just realized, I forgot to write something down over there. I have to go take care of it right now!" This was to give the children the possible impression that there may be more to discover.

In the naive condition, the experimenter pulled out the toy and said, "I just found this toy! See this toy?" She then "discovered" the squeak function as if by accident, and said, "Huh! Did you see that?" while repeating the action, as if surprised. Again, this was to provide a basic demonstration of one function, but to give the children the impression that there may be more to discover.

In the baseline condition, the experimenter simply said, "Wow, see this toy? Look at this!" and put it on the table, without demonstrating any function. This obviously leaves the toy entirely open to discovery.

In all four conditions, after the experimenter's dialogue, the child was left to play with the toy on his or her own, and researchers observed the ensuing behavior.

Here’s what happened:

Many children in the pedagogical condition failed to discover even one function in addition to the squeak. What's more, children in the pedagogical condition spent less time playing with the toy - less than two minutes, on average – than children in the other conditions.

Children in the other three conditions (interrupted, baseline, and naive) played with the toy and found, on average, one or two functions they had not been taught. They also played with it slightly more than two minutes in the naive condition to longer than three minutes in the baseline condition.


What does it mean?

Children are extremely sensitive to the subtleties of what we teach them. It is not important that we show children everything. We should show them something, but it matters how we do it.

If they believe that we have taught them everything, they will be less motivated to explore. Their curiosity will be diminished.

As parents and teachers of our children, we will likely encourage exploration in our children when we offer the caveat that there may be more to learn.

We can say things like, 'I'm showing you what we think is true, but there are a lot of other possibilities you should consider.’

The best way to encourage curiosity is to encourage exploration. When our children ask us questions, rather than giving them an answer we can show them where to find more.