ERIC Number: ED107704
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1969-Dec
Pages: 58
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
The Development of New Measures of Curiosity for Children. Report No. 56.
Greenberger, Ellen
This project has been directed towards the development of procedures for assessing children's curiosity. Better procedures are needed to reach one of the long-range goals of Center Program III: an understanding of the relationship of curiosity to academic achievement and other cognitive skills, styles and motives. This paper reviews briefly some existing curiosity assessment procedures and reports the development of two new measures: the Behavior Profile (BP), used by teachers to rate curiosity (BPC), achievement strivings (BPA), and achievement blocks (BPB): and the Incongruity Game, used to make a direct assessment of curiosity behavior under controlled conditions. Data were collected on these variables and many others for a sample of white middle class children in grades 1-3. The Incongruity Game did not relate in predicted ways to other variables, but the Behavior Profile curiosity subscale did. Among the major findings for the curiosity scale are these: (1) high reliability, (2) positive associations with grades, problem-solving flexibility, and scores on recall of novel information; and (3) somewhat different patterns of relationship among the three Behavior Profile subscale scores, IQ, and cognitive-academic performance for boys and for girls. A selection of findings for BPA and BPB is also presented. (Author)
Descriptors: Academic Achievement, Arousal Patterns, Attention Span, Children, Cognitive Ability, Curiosity, Individual Differences, Personality, Primary Education, Rating Scales, Responses, Sex Differences, Student Attitudes, Student Evaluation, Student Motivation, Task Performance, Teacher Attitudes, Test Reliability, Tests
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: N/A
Sponsor: National Inst. of Education (DHEW), Washington, DC.
Authoring Institution: Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, MD. Center for the Study of Social Organization of Schools.
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A