Abstract
•Experience on one task influences children’s exploration on a later task.•Unexpected success leads to longer and more variable exploration.•Expected success does not lead to changes in length and breadth of exploration.
Exploratory play supports children’s learning, but the factors that influence play are not fully identified. Here, we investigate whether experiencing an unexpected success on an initial task influences children’s exploration on a subsequent task. In Experiment 1 (N = 72), we found that when 4-year-olds successfully completed a puzzle that they were told is hard (compared to when they were told that the puzzle is easy or at baseline when no difficulty information was provided), they spent more time exploring and attempted more different interventions with a subsequent novel toy. This suggests that an unexpected success influences children’s subsequent exploration. In Experiment 2 (N = 48) we examined two alternative interpretations of the Experiment 1 findings: that children carried over difficulty assumptions from task 1 to the new toy or that children had unused attentional resources. Children completed the puzzle and then were told that the novel toy itself was either easy or hard. Children did not explore longer or more variably across these conditions, providing evidence against these alternative accounts. Our findings point to an important role for past playful experiences: unexpected success on one task motivates children to explore longer and with more breadth on another task.