“Wow, I did it!”: Unexpected success increases preschoolers’ exploratory play on a later task

Exploratory play supports children’s learning, but the factors that influence play are not fully identified. Here, we investigate whether experiencing an unexpected success on an initial task influences children’s exploration on a subsequent task. In Experiment 1 (N = 72), we found that when 4-year-olds successfully completed a puzzle that they were told is hard (compared to when they were told that the puzzle is easy or at baseline when no...