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It's Not Just How Smart You Are: Curiosity Is Key To Learning
Scientific American reports that a UC Davis study (paywalled) on how learning interacts with curiosity indicates that curiosity can lead to demonstrably better recall. From the SciAm article:
Neuroscientist Charan Ranganath and his fellow researchers asked 19 participants to review more than 100 questions, rating each in terms of how curious they were about the answer. Next, each subject revisited 112 of the questions—half of which strongly intrigued them whereas the rest they found uninteresting—while the researchers scanned their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). During the scanning session participants would view a question then wait 14 seconds and view a photograph of a face totally unrelated to the trivia before seeing the answer. Afterward the researchers tested participants to see how well they could recall and retain both the trivia answers and the faces they had seen. Ranganath and his colleagues discovered that greater interest in a question would predict not only better memory for the answer but also for the unrelated face that had preceded it. A follow-up test one day later found the same results—people could better remember a face if it had been preceded by an intriguing question. Somehow curiosity could prepare the brain for learning and long-term memory more broadly."
Isn't this some of those things that kind of is a 'given' ?
Curiosity leads to motivation, stuff you do in an unmotivated or bored state never come out well and (thankfully) will not be remembered.
Curiosity and enthusiasm for your work and an ability to learn? No, you're not a quality hire. We have a culture of mindless ignorant drudgery here. We don't need any free-thinking terrorists on our team.
Most schools makes sure to kill curiosity in its nest.
I'm not sure that curiosity or intrigue is some property that you can just "put" into a question, as the summary suggests.
Curiosity is so-obviously a huge factor in interest, but it's something that is - at least in part - inherent in a personality, not a question. You can ask the most wonderfully "intriguing" question of someone but if they have no interest, no desire to know, then it's not going to spark their interest. At best, they'll think there's more to the question, then be disappointed at the "trick".
As someone who works in schools (including private schools), curiosity is actually quite a rare trait. Most students just aren't interested in what their learning because it is - to the most part - not something they want to learn. They get forced to.
And the bright ones will FIND something intriguing about the most dull of subjects. I was always more fascinated by mathematics, and trying computer science to mathematics, and science to mathematics, and even graphic design to mathematics (the golden ratio, etc.) made it more interesting to me. This is the geek's main skill and the source of their brain power - the interest they can find in the most mundane of subjects.
The students that stand out have an unquenchable curiosity about the most mundane of things. They suck the knowledge from their teachers until they run dry and then move on to the next source.
I work in IT in schools - I'm not a teacher - but I had a student just last term who realised that I actually knew some things that his teachers didn't know (C programming, basic electronics, etc.). His curiosity ran riot and he did everything he could to learn more and schedule time that I could show him things (I'm not a teacher, but the school are really good about focusing on the student, so they allowed it). Hell, I took him into the science lab and showed him how to solder circuits because NOBODY had ever shown him how to do it.
This is a young adult that's since gone to an exclusive private school with the best teachers and resources in the world but because soldering was "new" to him, he took it on and within a couple of hours was proficient in it. It piqued his interest, so he didn't let it rest. Did I make it interesting? Did I come up with some link to other subjects he enjoyed? Did I make up stories about the history of soldering to make it more interesting? No.
Curiosity is a trait to instil in your child, at all costs. Not through trick questions, not through forcing them but to just get them to question and - when they do - answer. I can't tell you the number of teachers and parents I see say "I don't know" to a child's question and leave it at that. Or "it's too hard for you". Or even "Shut up, we need to do this next bit".
Instil curiosity by making curiosity the norm. "Well, how does it do that, do you think? I've no idea myself, son. Let's go find out, shall we? Shall we ask that guy that's running the machine?".
Curiosity is the driver here. It's not something you can make happen, it's certainly not something that you can get into a kid by rewording a question - but it's something you can encourage, by asking questions that all the other adults never bother to ask, and never bother to answer either.