To mark the end of his residency, Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells, FIAS FP x Iméra fellow 2024-2025, is organising an internal Iméra/ILCB/LPL workshop on the theme of curiosity and intrinsic motivation in learning for infants and children on June 27th and July 1st, 2025 at Iméra.
Discuss the role of curiosity and intrinsic motivation
Infants are active and curious learners, acting as little scientists who selectively explore, sample information, and enjoy the process. These observations underscore the intrinsic motivation and internal rewarding component of learning. In the particular case of early language acquisition, it might highlight the vital interaction between emotional-motivational systems and language learning mechanisms. Indeed, naturalistic language learning involves constantly sampling and exploring new information, selecting relevant pieces for the learning goals. Due to the lack of external tutoring or clear feedback, infants might rely on an internal self-monitoring system (as part of metacognitive processes) to continuously evaluate their learning progress (i.e., assessing the success of new learning).
The goal of the present project series of conferences from is to openly discuss new ideas about the neglected role of curiosity and intrinsic motivation (internal reward processing) in infant learning (especially in language acquisition), the role of metacognition (including self-monitoring) during the early stages of language acquisition as well as new insights on recent research in metacognition and curiosity in non-huma primates.
Programme
Location: Maison Neuve conference room, Iméra (2 place Leverrier, 13004 Marseille)
- 10:00 – 11:30 am: Katarina Begus (University of Copenhagen, Denmark).
What motivates infant learning? Investigating the (meta)-cognitive mechanisms and behavioural manifestations of infant curiosity - 11:30-11:45 am: coffee break.
- 11:45 am – 1:15 pm: Francesco Poli (MRC, Cambridge).
The developmental roots of exploration.
- 10:00-11:30 am: Saloni Krishnan (UCL, London).
Driven to Learn: Intrinsic Motivation in Children’s Word Learning. - 11:30-11:45 am: coffee break.
- 11:45 am -12:45 pm: Discussion with Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells (Iméra/Univ Barcelona), Chiara Mazzocconi (ILCB) & Ana Zappa (Univ. Barcelona).
Organisers
- Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells, FIAS FP x Iméra, supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement n°945408, ILCB chair, and ICREA – University of Barcelona.
- Isabelle Dautriche, CNRS research director at Centre de Recherche en Psychologie et en Neurosciences (UMR 7077, amU/CNRS) and at ILCB.
- Clément François, CNRS research fellow at Laboratoire Parole et Langage (UMR 7309 CNRS/amU).
Coming to Iméra
- Pedestrian access: come through the gate of the 2 place Leverrier, 13004 Marseille.
- PRM access: come through the gate of the Allée Jean-Louis Pons, 13004 Marseille.
