Abstract
The basic purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between environmental awareness, environmental attitude, curiosity and exploration in highly gifted students with structural equation modelling. The secondary aim was to compare highly gifted and non-gifted students’ environmental awareness, environmental attitude, curiosity and exploration levels. Participants were 311 (154 highly gifted, 157 non-gifted) secondary school students in Turkey who volunteered to take part in this study. All of the participants were either 13 or 14 years old, with a mean age of 13.77 years. For gathering data, Environmental Awareness Scale, Environmental Attitude Scale, Curiosity and Exploration-II were used. While analyzing the data, Pearson correlation analysis, independent samples t test, and structural equation model were used. According to the findings, highly gifted students’ environmental awareness, environmental attitude, curiosity and exploration scores were higher than non-gifted students’. Indices of Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) indicated that the increase in the curiosity and exploration scores of the highly gifted children increased the environmental awareness; in this case, the environmental attitudes were affected
Highlights
Curiosity has been a matter that has attracted the attention of researchers for many years (Berlyne, 1954; McReynolds, Acker, & Pietila, 1961)
Loewenstein (1994), who conducted experiments related to curiosity in the field of psychology, stated that the reason behind curiosity cannot be answered in nature
Curiosity and exploration are the state of two valuable motives and emotions that exist in the nature of all living beings (Gerber, 2009; Kashdan & Fincham, 2004; Kashdan & Silvia, 2009)
Summary
Curiosity has been a matter that has attracted the attention of researchers for many years (Berlyne, 1954; McReynolds, Acker, & Pietila, 1961). Curiosity is considered as the desire for experience or new information and an important premise for exploration (Litman & Silvia, 2006). Curiosity indicates the intensity and frequency of situational experiences (Silvia, 2008) as an abstract and lifelong personality trait (Silvia & Kashdan, 2009). Curiosity can be explained as “the desire for noticing, revealing and exploring the new, difficult and indefinite incidents and the potential of coping with the situation” (Kashdan & Silvia, 2009; Silvia, 2008). Thanks to the desire for exploration, babies know about their environment and learn new things (Aspelmeier & Kerns, 2003)
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