Exploring the unknown: The effects of social support on exploration in childhood

An earlier version of this text was published in Hungarian on the website of ELTE PPK under the title "Does Teaching Restrict Children's Curiosity?" on March 24, 2025.

Children learn about the world in different ways. Adults may assist them by transmitting knowledge through "pedagogical" instruction, and they may explore their environment independently, gaining experience on their own. In our research, we examined the relationship between exploration and learning through pedagogy.

Didactic teaching—considered a natural pedagogical situation—allows for the efficient and rapid transmission of knowledge. However, previous studies have highlighted that while this method facilitates effective information transfer, it may also limit the discovery of hidden causal relationships in the physical environment. Therefore, some experts argue that learning through pedagogical instruction and learning through individual exploration are mutually exclusive processes. It is possible that teaching constrains independent information acquisition and the autonomous discovery of alternative possibilities.

However, research on children's exploratory learning has shown that in certain situations, pedagogical cues actually promote independent information-seeking. These situations—referred to in the literature as guided play—are characterized by children having the opportunity to search for information autonomously while adults merely reinforce the "correct" knowledge or behaviors demonstrated by the children and assist them if they encounter difficulties. Thus, learning through pedagogical signals and exploratory learning may not necessarily be at odds with each other but may, in fact, complement one another.

To investigate this, we designed a special multi-functional object for preschool-aged children. During the study, children learned about one function of the toy in different ways. In one condition, participants were shown the function through a didactic pedagogical manner, while in another condition, they discovered its operation on their own. In both cases, adults provided identical instructions regarding the function. Additionally, another group of children was also introduced to the toy either through demonstration or exploration, but in this case, the adult’s communication was not pedagogical in nature—it was not informative with regards to how the device worked. We measured how long children engaged with the initially learned function and how much they sought alternative possibilities within the object.

The results indicates that pedagogical signals in both condition highlight the relevance of the initially learned function: children played with it longer compared to cases where they did not receive pedagogical instruction. The research also showed that if the use of the toy was not demonstrated to children, but they were allowed to discover it independently, pedagogical signals did not dampen exploratory behavior.

These findings suggest that pedagogy and exploration complement each other: pedagogical signals highlight relevant information within the context, while exploratory behavior allows children to acquire additional knowledge. Autonomous exploration contributes to the development of a richer knowledge base and the discovery of alternative evidence, while information from adults can serve as a starting point for independent knowledge acquisition, as children do not need to reinvent already established and widely shared knowledge. Thus, rather than opposing each other, these two learning forms support one another in fostering a deeper understanding of the world.

The full study can be read here.