Celeste Kidd Receives John Templeton Grant
Celeste Kidd received a John Templeton Grant, which harnesses the methods of science to make progress in understanding hte deepest and most perplexing questions facing humankind.
Kidd received $499,943 for the project "Character Virtue Development" on curiosity in childhood. Given that curiosity . helps us learn and we generally become less curious as we age, the grant investigates curiosity more thoroughly and in particular focuses on how we develop this skill.
Their theoretical approach to enhance children's level of curiosity is to combine ideas from evolutionary biology and artificial intelligence, arguing that childhood curiosity reflects the explore side of an explore-exploit trade-off. Those scientists will carry out four empirical, cross-cultural and computational projects answering the question of how can we encourage curiosity and suggest ways to apply the results. They will also explore and disseminate these ideas in a popular book already under contract to Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, and in the press and media more generally, and outline potential interventions that might encourage curiosity.
To learn more information about John Templeton Grant, please visit here.