A Novel Assessment of Epistemic Curiosity and its Association With Early Learning Outcomes

Curiosity is fundamental to young children’s learning, yet no brief, validated behavioral measure of epistemic curiosity is designed for field-based research with preschool-aged children. This article describes the development and validation of the Animal Game, a 10-trial behavioral task, that yields two scores: a Novelty Score, reflecting preference for new over familiar stimuli (interest-type curiosity), and a Novelty plus Knowledge-Seeking Score, additionally capturing the desire to learn more (deprivation-type curiosity). Data were collected between March 2023 and March 2024 from 594 socioeconomically diverse children in the United States (ages 3–6; M = 4.20 years; 52% female; parents 42% White, 28% Black, 21% Hispanic or Latino). Internal consistency was high (α = .85 and .83) and six-month test–retest reliability was low to moderate (r = .21–.23). Confirmatory factor analysis supported a two-factor structure, with scalar measurement invariance across child sex and parental education. Receptive vocabulary correlated more strongly with the Novelty plus Knowledge-Seeking Score (r = .181) than with the Novelty Score (r = .115), and the association was robust to a rich set of demographic and parental controls. The Animal Game can capture relevant dimensions of early childhood curiosity in field-based studies, pending replication in independent samples.