Curiosity and creativity are defining features of early childhood (Lucca & Wilbourn, Reference Lucca and Wilbourn2018; Mottweiler & Taylor, Reference Mottweiler and Taylor2014) that are widely believed to fade with age – a worrying prospect, given how essential they are for discovery and innovation (Gopnik & Griffiths, Reference Gopnik and Griffiths2017). Evidence for such worries, however, is mixed; while some studies suggest developmental decreases in curiosity and creativity (e.g., Liquin & Gopnik, Reference Liquin and Gopnik2022), others indicate improvements (e.g., Said-Metwaly, Fernández-Castilla, Kyndt, Van Den Noortgate, & Barbot, Reference Said-Metwaly, Fernández-Castilla, Kyndt, Van Den Noortgate and Barbot2021). We suggest Ivancovsky et al.'s Novelty-Seeking Model (NSM) – specifically the proposed role of top-down processes – can help reconcile these findings. We discuss how the NSM's predictions both align with and deviate from existing developmental research and propose two new elements that, if integrated into the NSM, could help it more fully explain creativity and curiosity across the lifespan.

The NSM ascribes a central role to top-down attentional and cognitive control. The profound improvement in these capacities from infancy to adulthood (Carlson, Zelazo, & Faja, Reference Carlson, Zelazo, Faja and Zelazo2013) suggests their development is integral to developmental change in creativity and curiosity. At the affinity stage of the NSM, children's broader, less focused attention might allow more stimuli to draw their attention and trigger the novelty-seeking process, expanding the scope of exploration. At the evaluation stage, children's limited executive function skills might constrain their ability to evaluate ideas (in creativity) or focus on and deeply explore them (in curiosity), leading to more expansive but less refined creative ideation and broader but shallower exploration. In sum, rather than monotonic developmental increases or decreases, the NSM implies different patterns of change in different aspects of creativity and curiosity – breadth and volume should decrease with age, as top-down control strengthens, but depth and quality should increase.

In many respects, these NSM-based predictions are consistent with existing developmental findings. Consistent with the NSM's account of the affinity stage, children explore new environments more broadly than adults (Liquin & Gopnik, Reference Liquin and Gopnik2022), at least partly due to their wider attentional scope (Blanco & Sloutsky, Reference Blanco and Sloutsky2020; Plebanek & Sloutsky, Reference Plebanek and Sloutsky2017). And consistent with the NSM's account of the evaluation stage, there is evidence that children can use their executive function skills to increase the creativity of their ideas, but do so less effectively than adults (Nusbaum, Silvia, & Beaty, Reference Nusbaum, Silvia and Beaty2014; Vaisarova & Carlson, Reference Vaisarova and Carlson2023).

Other developmental findings, however, are harder to reconcile with the NSM. Perhaps most notably, the NSM implies children should be better at generating many ideas (i.e., more creatively “fluent”) than adults due to their broader attentional scope and limited capacity for idea-evaluation. However, except for some temporary “slumps,” ideational fluency generally increases with age (Said-Metwaly et al., Reference Said-Metwaly, Fernández-Castilla, Kyndt, Van Den Noortgate and Barbot2021). While this discrepancy might be partly explained by developmental change in the content and structure of memory, it remains unclear whether this is the full story. Further, in contrast with positive associations between adults' executive function and fluency (e.g., Benedek, Franz, Heene, & Neubauer, Reference Benedek, Franz, Heene and Neubauer2012), children's executive function can be negatively associated with fluency (Hendry et al., Reference Hendry, Agyapong, D'Souza, Frick, Portugal, Konke and Brocki2022; Vaisarova & Carlson, Reference Vaisarova and Carlson2021). This suggests qualitative change in the role of top-down processes, which the NSM does not currently account for. We propose the model needs to incorporate additional factors – including metacognitive skills and social influences – to apply across the lifespan.

Developmental change in metacognition – specifically, understanding of one's own novelty-seeking process – can help contextualize the changing role of executive function. While adults self-report using a range of executively demanding strategies when generating ideas (Gilhooly, Fioratou, Anthony, & Wynn, Reference Gilhooly, Fioratou, Anthony and Wynn2007), children report fewer, less executively demanding strategies (Bai, Mulder, Moerbeek, Kroesbergen, & Leseman, Reference Bai, Mulder, Moerbeek, Kroesbergen and Leseman2021). Understanding how to strategically enhance ideation appears to improve with age and might shape how executive function is used at the NSM's evaluation stage – not just to evaluate ideas, but to evaluate and modify the novelty-seeking process. Metacognitive changes can also help explain the finding that executive function appears positively associated with adults' ideational fluency but negatively associated with children's; this might occur because adults better understand how to use their executive skills to help them generate ideas.

A second factor emphasized in developmental discussions of creativity and curiosity, which would enrich the NSM and help it better account for developmental findings, is the social context in which novelty-seeking unfolds. Social conformity and social learning are key factors that can both constrain and expand creativity and curiosity (Barbot, Lubart, & Besançon, Reference Barbot, Lubart and Besançon2016; Lee, Lazaro, Wang, Şen, & Lucca, Reference Lee, Lazaro, Wang, Şen and Lucca2023). For instance, children's artwork becomes less creative when they are told it will be evaluated (Amabile, Reference Amabile1982), and when parents engage in more exploration their children do as well (Willard et al., Reference Willard, Busch, Cullum, Letourneau, Sobel, Callanan and Legare2019). Within the NSM, we propose these influences largely operate at the affinity and evaluation phases. Social cues may draw individuals' attention to certain aspects of their environment, as well as shaping their goals and evaluation criteria. Standards for the usefulness of an idea, for instance, might be higher in a context where it will be used by others.

Our discussion is limited by methodological factors that have precluded researchers from giving equal attention to creativity and curiosity across ages, making it difficult to pinpoint their associations and shared processes across development (but see Evans & Jirout, Reference Evans and Jirout2023). Creativity assessments tend to rely heavily on verbal skills, making them inappropriate for very young children, while curiosity-driven behaviors like pointing and manual exploration can be reliably observed in infancy (Lucca & Wilbourn, Reference Lucca and Wilbourn2018; Stahl & Feigenson, Reference Stahl and Feigenson2015). And although both curiosity and creativity are multidimensional and pose significant measurement challenges (Lee et al., Reference Lee, Lazaro, Wang, Şen and Lucca2023; Lubart, Zenasni, & Barbot, Reference Lubart, Zenasni and Barbot2013), development of behavioral creativity assessments for children has received more attention (e.g., Torrance, Reference Torrance1966). Ongoing work in our research group aims to address this discrepancy by developing a behavioral “curiosity battery” for young children. A complete account of mechanisms underlying curiosity and creativity across the lifespan will require research examining their links from an early age using validated, developmentally appropriate measures, and considering the role of factors like metacognition and social context. Beyond providing a more robust theoretical model, this work has important practical implications – the more we know about how curiosity and creativity operate early in life, the more we can empower children to become curious, creative problem-solvers.