Curious on Exploration

The psychology and neuroscience of curiosity
Celeste Kidd and Benjamin Y. Hayden

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SUMMARY
Curiosity is a basic element of our cognition, yet its biological function, mechanisms, and neural underpinning remain poorly understood. It is nonetheless a motivator for learning, influential in decision-making, and crucial for healthy development. One factor limiting our understanding of it is the lack of a widely agreed upon delineation of what is and is not curiosity; another factor is the dearth of standardized laboratory tasks that manipulate curiosity in the lab. Despite these barriers, recent years have seen a major growth of interest in both the neuroscience and psychology of curiosity. In this Perspective, we advocate for the importance of the field, provide a selective overview of its current state, and describe tasks that are used to study curiosity and information-seeking. We propose that, rather than worry about defining curiosity, it is more helpful to consider the motivations for information-seeking behavior and to study it in its ethological context.

Keywords: Curiosity, information-seeking, learning, Goldilocks effect, uncertainty
BACKGROUND
Curiosity is such a basic component of our natures that we are nearly oblivious to its pervasiveness in our lives. Consider, though, how much of our time we spend seeking and consuming information, whether listening to the news or music, browsing the internet, reading books or magazines, watching TV, movies, and sports, or otherwise engaging in activities not directly related to eating, reproduction, and basic survival. Our insatiable demand for information drives a much of the global economy and, on a micro-scale, motivates learning and drives patterns of foraging in animals. Its diminution is a symptom of depression, and its overexpression contributes to distractibility, a symptom of disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Curiosity is thought of as the noblest of human drives, and is just as often as it is denigrated as dangerous (as in the expression “curiosity killed the cat”). And despite its link with the most abstract human thoughts, some rudimentary forms of it can be observed even in the humble worm C. elegans.

Despite its pervasiveness, we lack even the most basic integrative theory of the basis, mechanisms, and purpose of curiosity. Nonetheless, as a psychological phenomenon, curiosity—and the desire for information more broadly—has attracted the interest of the biggest names in the history of psychology (e.g., James, 1913; Pavlov, 1927; Skinner, 1938). Despite this interest, only recently have psychologists and neuroscientists begun widespread and coordinated efforts to unlock its mysteries (e.g., Gottlieb et al., 2013; Gruber, Gelman & Ranganath, 2014; Kang et al., 2009). The present Perspective aims summarize this recent research, motivate new interested in the problem, and to tentatively propose a framework for future studies of the neuroscience and psychology of curiosity.

isnt the point of climbing so you can climb new terrain? otherwise its like learning to read but never writing your own stuff.