This is a Registered Report, in-principle acceptance, to appear in Developmental Science.
Abstract: The cognitive mechanisms and benefits of active learning in early child development are poorly understood. The current study will investigate 18-month-old infants’ curiosity-driven information selection in a novel word learning task, designed to identify any potential advantage for active learning over passive learning. In a gaze-contingent eye-tracking paradigm, infants in one condition will be given the opportunity to structure their own information seeking to actively create word learning opportunities for themselves, while infants in two other conditions will engage in learning novel words passively. Infants’ learning of word-object associations will be compared across active and passive learning paradigms. This study will advance our understanding of early word learning, and of the mechanisms and benefits of active, curiosity-based learning in infants.