Why are smart people curious? Fluid intelligence,openness to experience,and interest

The experience of interest is central to intrinsic motivation for learning, so it is important to understand the nature of interest and its sources. Individual differences in fluid intelligence (Gf) predict finding things more interesting, but it is possible that this effect is merely due to the overlap of Gf with openness to experience, a strong predictor of interest across many domains. The present research measured Gf, the Big Five traits, and the interestingness of contemporary poems and visual art. Latent variable models found that Gf predicted interest in both poems and pictures, even when openness and gender were included as predictors. Moreover, Gf and openness did not interact, indicating main effects rather than joint effects. The relationship between Gf and interest thus appears robust.     

The Effects of Concreteness on Mathematical Manipulative Choice

There is mixed evidence as to whether concrete manipulatives (e.g., toy animals) are better than abstract manipulatives (e.g., counters) for teaching mathematical concepts to children. Concreteness is defined as the amount of extraneous information a manipulative provides, and in this study we aimed to unpick which dimensions of concreteness influence manipulative choice. Researchers, teachers, and parents completed a comparative judgment task comparing images of manipulatives varying in different dimensions of concreteness, selecting which they would choose to teach arithmetic to children. The findings indicated homogeneous, 3-dimensional manipulatives were the most preferred across all groups to teach arithmetic to children, regardless of more extraneous features. This contradicts research recommendations to minimize the use of concrete manipulatives due to their distractive qualities. Instead, it suggests that some concrete features may be preferred in more naturalistic contexts. More research is required to investigate how different dimensions of concreteness influence learning outcomes for children both in artificial research contexts and in practice.