A rational analysis of curiosity
This work addresses the fundamental problem of explaining curiosity for cognitive science and psychology, offering a unifying framework that integrates existing theories.
The authors tackled the problem of understanding curiosity by proposing a rational framework that unifies previous theories, showing that curiosity is driven by stimuli that maximize future response ability, with experimental results confirming predictions about the relationship between curiosity and confidence varying with environmental factors.
We present a rational analysis of curiosity, proposing that people's curiosity is driven by seeking stimuli that maximize their ability to make appropriate responses in the future. This perspective offers a way to unify previous theories of curiosity into a single framework. Experimental results confirm our model's predictions, showing how the relationship between curiosity and confidence can change significantly depending on the nature of the environment. Please refer to https://psyarxiv.com/wg5m6/ for a more updated version of this manuscript with a more detailed modeling section with extensive experiments.