Qianqian Wan¹, Nathalie Moriarty¹, Shea Duarte¹, Simona Ghetti¹, Joy Geng¹; ¹UC Davis

Exploration is fundamental to learning, yet most developmental research has used simplified paradigms with discrete choices. Everyday exploration, however, requires coordinating movement, perception, and attention simultaneously in continuous environments. Processes that may influence exploration, including spatial navigation, visual encoding, and adaptation to salient events, have typically been studied in isolation. Measuring them together within a single exploration context allows us to assess their relative contributions to developmental differences. We asked children (ages 7–14, N=41) and adults (N=42) to freely explore a large-scale virtual furniture store (4,216 m²) in immersive VR while tracking eye, head, and body movements. The environment contained 10 multisensory objects (MS-objects) that produced sounds and animations when approached, providing controlled probes into how participants adapt to salient events during ongoing exploration. Adults explored significantly more than children, visiting more locations (92.8% vs. 72.5%, p < .001) and viewing more objects (42.7% vs. 29.7%, p < .001) despite traveling similar distances (p = .235). This difference was related to three factors. First, children backtracked more than adults (p = .008). Second, children spent more time looking at each object (0.61s vs. 0.47s, p < .001), reflecting slower encoding. Third, children adapted more slowly to MS-objects, indicated by less deep processing initially (β = −.15, p < .001), smaller changes across encounters (p < .001), and more fixated repetitions to encode MS-objects (β = −0.66, p < .001). Together, these findings suggest that children's exploration may be largely constrained by their developing memory systems. Regression models revealed that backtracking and encoding efficiency together explained 57.5% of the total explained variance (51.7%) in exploration within children, with age contributing only 0.1% unique variance. These results suggest that developmental differences in exploration are best understood through behaviors that improve with age rather than chronological age itself.

Acknowledgements: James S. McDonnell Foundation, NSF BCS 2446371