Abstract
This pre-registration outlines a randomized controlled trial testing whether stress constrains information acquisition among 1,200 low-income parents of kindergarteners in Mumbai. The experiment implements a 2x2 factorial design: parents receive either (i) a stress-relief breathing routine (with a tactile bracelet cue) or a bracelet-only control condition, and (ii) daily curiosity prompts that vary in signal precision---high-precision prompts elicit bounded, verifiable responses (e.g., counting, binary choices), while low-precision prompts require open-ended interpretation (e.g., ``why'' or ``how'' questions). This design isolates whether stress disproportionately impairs the processing of ambiguous signals. I pre-register four confirmatory hypotheses on emotional regulation, belief updating accuracy, engagement and habit formation, and a focal Stress x Precision interaction testing whether stress reduction helps parents extract value from harder-to-interpret information. The plan specifies sampling (N=1,200 across ~20 schools), interventions (delivered via tactile bracelet cues and physical card decks), timeline (24 weeks with midline at Week 12), power calculations (accounting for 20-25% attrition), and intent-to-treat estimation using ANCOVA with pre-specified indices, mechanisms, heterogeneity tests, and treatment-on-the-treated estimates. Multiple-testing corrections, robustness checks, and attrition-bounding procedures are detailed. All curiosity activity prompts and their information-cost coding rules (Dimensions A--E) are included as appendices.