The prospective role of epistemic curiosity in national standardized test performance

Abstract

To examine the prospective association between epistemic curiosity and academic achievement, this study focused on 820 (64.2% females) second-year high school students (age 17–18), and their performances in the matriculation exams one year later. In addition, two types of epistemic curiosity, the interest and deprivation types, were examined as independent predictors. Furthermore, the role of curiosity in matriculation exam performance was examined at the general and subject level (i.e., mother tongue and math) by accounting for gender, social economic status, and subject motivation (i.e., subject expectancy and task values). Moreover, we examined the possible mediating role of subject motivation between curiosity and achievement. The path models' results showed that interest-type curiosity had a direct relation with overall matriculation performance, whereas deprivation-type curiosity had an indirect relation only. For mother tongue performance, interest-type curiosity was the main prospective predictor, although its direct relation disappeared. For math matriculation performance, only deprivation-type curiosity had an indirect relation. The results imply that epistemic curiosity can promote academic achievement, but that the association is achieved through different pathways that depend on curiosity types, motivation mediators, and the domain level of achievements.