Note on Curiosity and Intelligence of School Children
As findings regarding the relationship between curiosity and intelligence have not been entirely consistent (1, 3, 4 ) , the Primary Mental Abilities Test was administered to 67 white children in Grade 5 who also rated themselves as to level of curiosity ( 2 ). The scale has 41 items such as "I like to explore strange places," which logically seem related to curiosity. The scale had previously been found to discriminate between groups of children high and low in curiosity. A split-half reliability corrected for attenuation was .91. The Primary Mental Abilities Test purports to measure several independent factors of intelligence. Significant Pearson product-moment correlations between intelligence and curiosity were observed; for boys, r = .38 and for girls, r = .54. For the girls, the correlation accounted for about 30% of the variance of the measures.