We need words: picture books cannot satisfy 5-year-olds’ curiosity

Young children are exposed to perceptual figures frequently before they show curiosity of knowledge, which is a meaningful hallmark for the development of curiosity; however, limited research has explored how curiosity develops from perceptual to epistemic. This study investigated the developmental sequence of perceptual curiosity and epistemic curiosity with 160 4~5-year-old children. The blur pictures were presented to examine children's curiosity about perceptual stimuli, while the trivia task explored children's curiosity about knowledge. The results suggested that perceptual curiosity was acquired first, followed by epistemic curiosity which was acquired at 5-year-olds. Meanwhile, the presented order, sequence or random, does not influence children's exploration time.