Curious Learners: How Infants’ Motivation to Learn Shapes and Is Shaped by Infants’ Interactions with the Social World

Begus, Katarina; Southgate, Victoria

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-77182-3_2

Curious Learners: How Infants’ Motivation to Learn Shapes and Is Shaped by Infants’ Interactions with the Social World

Katarina Begus³ &
Victoria Southgate⁴

Chapter
First Online: 05 May 2018

1535 Accesses
11 Citations

Abstract

Most theories of infant social learning focus on how infants learn whatever and whenever the adults decide to teach them. While infants are well equipped to learn from adults, recent research suggests infant social learning is not a passive process but that infants may play an active role in acquiring information and modulating their learning according to their interests. This chapter aims to highlight the importance of investigating young children’s intrinsic motivation for learning, particularly in the domain of social learning. It reviews the current research on how infants’ curiosity may be expressed through their behaviour while interacting with social partners, and how responding to these expressions of curiosity may affect infants’ learning. Finally, through the investigation of the possible neurological underpinnings of the social and motivational aspects of learning, this chapter explores infants’ selectivity in social partners and how it can be explained by their motivation to learn.

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Cognitive Development Center, Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
Katarina Begus
Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Victoria Southgate

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Katarina Begus
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Victoria Southgate
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Department of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
Megan M. Saylor
Department of Applied Psychology & Human Development, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Patricia A. Ganea

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Begus, K., Southgate, V. (2018). Curious Learners: How Infants’ Motivation to Learn Shapes and Is Shaped by Infants’ Interactions with the Social World. In: Saylor, M., Ganea, P. (eds) Active Learning from Infancy to Childhood. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77182-3_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77182-3_2
Published: 05 May 2018
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77181-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77182-3
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