Curiosity enhances learning, including for incidental material encountered during high-curiosity states¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · review r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2015 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Curiosity enhances learning of the sought information, consistent with the theory that curiosity's primary function is to facilitate learning. → Kidd 2015 q2 i? A curiosity state improves memory even for incidental material: subjects recalled neutral faces shown during high-curiosity trials better than faces from low-curiosity trials. → Kidd 2015 (2)

Evidence¶

Kidd 2015¶

Kidd, Celeste and Hayden, Benjamin Y. (2015). The psychology and neuroscience of curiosity. Neuron. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2015.09.010

q2 · i? · review · r2

The review reports that in the Kang et al. (2009) trivia study, "curiosity enhances learning", with the learning effect particularly strong on trials where subjects' guesses were incorrect. The review presents this as support for curiosity's function being to motivate learning.

"Kang and colleagues also found that curiosity enhances learning, consistent with the theory that the primary function of curiosity is to facilitate learning."

Kidd 2015 (2)¶

Kidd, Celeste and Hayden, Benjamin Y. (2015). The psychology and neuroscience of curiosity. Neuron. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2015.09.010

q2 · i? · review · r2

The review reports the Gruber et al. (2014) fMRI study in which subjects answered trivia questions and rated curiosity while neutral faces were interleaved as a learning probe. The curiosity state "led to better learning, even for the things people weren't curious about", with memory correlated with midbrain and hippocampal activity.

"When tested later, subjects recalled the faces shown in high curiosity trials better than faces shown on low curiosity trials."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• High-curiosity states did not enhance recognition memory for incidental face images in children or adolescents — reports the opposite
• Children with greater curiosity-related trivia memory benefits also show greater curiosity-related incidental face memory benefits — related
• Curiosity about trivia answers is a U-shaped function of confidence, supporting information-gap theory — related
• Dopamine neurons treat informational reward like primary reward, and OFC encodes information value separately from reward size — related
• Without feedback, people are more curious about high-confidence errors than about equally high-confidence correct answers, replicated across experiments — related
• Studying one's highest-curiosity items produced better recall than studying lowest-curiosity items — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• In over 60% of inquiry threads of low-achieving students, curiosity was followed by confusion, and joy or confusion by curiosity (sequential patterns, not shown causes) — related
• Post-answer interest enhances trivia answer memory more strongly in adolescents than in children — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• States of high pre-answer curiosity enhance memory for trivia answers similarly in children and adolescents — related