Curiosity Flashcards
What is curiosity? How does it relate to metacognition?
Non instrumental information seeking (seeking out information with no immediate/obvious value)
Curiosity seems to be a basic motivational drive that benefits learning, but also aligns with aspects of metacognition - predicts learning similar to metacognitive judgements, information gap aligns with illusion of explanatory depth (whether perceive gap), tip of the tongue states (active gap, both high when close to answer), and region of proximal learning (more Curiosity for things feel on cusp of knowing).
Explain curiosity as a motivational drive to aid learning and give evidence
Nissen 1930 - rats are driven to explore, will go through electified plate to get to seen but unexplored area, suggests curiosity a basic drive as overcomes avoidance of pain another drive.
Berlyne 1954 - curisoity seems to drive learning, learn better when curious
Gruber et al. 2014 - high curiosity ratings for knowing answer to questions associated with improved learning of answers (performance on suprise memoru test after being told answers)
Explain the information gap theory using studies
Loewenstein 1994 suggests curiosity arises when attention becomes focused on a gap in one’s knowledge, found more curious with greater information gap (longer list of US states with rule for why on list). Dependent on attention means only curious when notice gap there, more curious for insight compared to incremental puzzles as information gap is closed more quickly
Kang et al. 2009 suggest not just how big the gap is but how closeable, found less curious when high confidence but less curious when low confidence (inverted U shape), most curious when information feels “knowable”.
Explain how illusion of explanatory depth relates to curiosity and give evidence
People aren’t always curious despite being surrounded by things they don’t know about. Only motivated to fill gap/curious when percieve gap is there - Kiel 2003 illusion of explanatory depth means people think their knowledge is better than is (don’t percieve a gap or think the gap is smaller) so less curious
Explain how tip of the tongue states relate to curiosity and give evidence
Litman et al. 2005 - curiosity is high in TOT states
Wade and Kidd 2019 - curiosity for asnwer to trivia questions greater when closer to asnwer (own and observer rating of how similar to real answer), similar to tip of the tongue state both occur when know shape of answer but can’t quite get it
Explain how region of proximal learning relates to curiosity and give evidence
Kang et al. 2009 showed that curiosity greatest when asnwer feels knowable (medium level of confidence for knowing the answer). Curiosity could therefore be greatest for the region of proximal learning (Metcalfe et al. 2023) where motivated to learn things feel on cusp of knowing but less for things no way of knowing or already know
