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Curiosity

Prime #
87
Origin domain
Psychology
Also from
Education & Pedagogy, Neuroscience
Related primes
Uncertainty, Ambidexterity (Exploit vs. Explore), Attention, Learning

Core Idea

Curiosity is [1] the intrinsically motivating drive to acquire information, explore novelty, or resolve uncertainty when the reasoner perceives a gap between current knowledge and a salient possible state of fuller knowledge. Foundational work by Berlyne (1960) establishes curiosity as a motivational state, while Loewenstein (1994) distinguishes two main forms: epistemic curiosity (desire for knowledge) and diversive curiosity (desire for stimulation). The information-gap theory posits that perceived gaps create an aversive state; closing the gap is inherently rewarding. Intrinsic motivation (Ryan & Deci 2000) anchors curiosity's self-sustaining character: information-seeking is pursued for its own value, not solely for instrumental payoff. Curiosity emerges when the gap occupies the Goldilocks zone — neither trivially small (already known) nor overwhelmingly large (inaccessible) — producing [2] sustained information-seeking behavior and affective engagement. Distinct from interest (a durable preference), surprise (response to violation), or boredom (absence of stimulation), curiosity is characterized by the information gap, the uncertainty-driven seeking, and the gap-closing reward that persist independent of external incentives.

How would you explain it like I'm…

Wanting To Know

You know how sometimes you see a wrapped present and you just have to know what's inside? That tug in your brain is curiosity. It's the feeling that makes you ask questions, peek under rocks, and want to find out things. Knowing the answer feels good all by itself, even without a prize.

Itch To Find Out

Curiosity is the urge to learn or explore when you notice a gap between what you know and what you could know. If the gap is tiny, you don't care. If it's huge, it feels hopeless. But if it's just right - a little out of reach but reachable - your brain wants to close it, and closing it feels rewarding all by itself. That reward is why people keep reading mysteries, opening menus, or googling random questions late at night.

Information-Gap Drive

Curiosity is the inner drive to seek information or explore novelty when you notice a gap between what you currently know and a fuller possible understanding. Loewenstein's information-gap theory says perceiving the gap creates a mildly unpleasant state, and closing it is intrinsically rewarding. The drive activates strongest in a Goldilocks zone: too-small gaps feel trivial, too-large gaps feel hopeless, and the in-between range produces sustained seeking and engagement. Researchers usually split curiosity into epistemic (wanting knowledge) and diversive (wanting stimulation). It's also different from interest (a stable preference), surprise (reaction to a violation), and boredom (absence of stimulation): curiosity is specifically the gap, the seeking, and the reward of closing it.

 

Curiosity is an intrinsically motivating drive to acquire information, explore novelty, or resolve uncertainty when the reasoner perceives a gap between current knowledge and a salient possible state of fuller knowledge. Berlyne's foundational work established curiosity as a distinct motivational state; Loewenstein later sharpened the framing by distinguishing epistemic curiosity (desire for knowledge) from diversive curiosity (desire for stimulation) and articulating the information-gap theory: perceived gaps generate an aversive state, and closing them is inherently rewarding. Ryan and Deci's intrinsic-motivation framework anchors curiosity's self-sustaining character - information-seeking is pursued for its own value rather than for instrumental payoff. Activation peaks in a Goldilocks zone: gaps that are trivially small (already known) or overwhelmingly large (inaccessible) fail to engage, while moderately-sized gaps produce sustained seeking and affective engagement. Curiosity is structurally distinct from interest (a durable preference), surprise (response to violated expectation), and boredom (absence of stimulation). Its signature is the triad of perceived gap, uncertainty-driven seeking, and gap-closing reward, all operative independently of external incentive.

Structural Signature

A motivational state qualifies as curiosity when each of the following holds:

  • Perceived knowledge or experience gap (the information gap). The reasoner has a representation of something not known, not experienced, or not understood — [2] the gap may be specific (what is in this box?) or diffuse (how does this field work?).
  • Gap within the Goldilocks zone (the optimal-arousal level). The gap is large enough to be noticed as a gap but small enough that progress seems possible; gaps too small are already-known, and gaps too large produce disengagement or overwhelm.
  • Information-seeking disposition (the uncertainty-driven seeking). The reasoner is disposed to act in ways that might close the gap — asking questions, exploring, reading, experimenting, attending — rather than to ignore the gap.
  • Intrinsic motivation (the intrinsic motivation). The drive is present without external incentive (payment, praise, grade); reduction of the gap is itself rewarding. [3]
  • Affective signature (the novelty appetite). The state has characteristic affect — interest, engagement, eager attention — distinct from task-oriented compliance or obligation- driven inquiry.
  • Sustained attention and persistence (the exploration-exploitation balance). The curiosity-driven activity is maintained through minor obstacles and partial results, often more effectively than externally-motivated activity.

What It Is Not

  • Not mere need for information. An instrumental information need (I need to know the departure time to catch my flight) elicits information-seeking but is not curiosity in the intrinsic- motivation sense. Curiosity is characterized by seeking information for its own value.
  • Not exploration broadly. All exploration involves information-seeking, but exploration can also be driven by resource need, mandated search, or stochastic behavior. Curiosity-driven exploration specifically involves the perceived-gap structure and intrinsic reward.
  • Not novelty-seeking as personality trait. Sensation-seeking or openness to experience overlap with curiosity but are broader constructs. Curiosity specifically targets knowledge or understanding gaps, not stimulation per se.
  • Not attention. Attention is selective processing of a subset of input; curiosity is a motivation that directs attention toward gaps. The two interact closely but are at different levels — motivational vs processing. See attention.
  • Not engagement with any content. Being interested in a story or a topic involves curiosity-related processes but also involves enjoyment, flow, identity- relevance, and other motivational factors. Curiosity is specifically the gap-oriented component.
  • Common misclassification. Equating curiosity with good grades or intellectual interest generally; treating curiosity as a fixed trait rather than a state-trait combination; confusing curiosity with distraction (both involve attention shifts, but curiosity is goal-directed toward information).

Broad Use

  • Developmental and educational psychology
    • Early-childhood exploration (Piaget, Vygotsky); Loewenstein's information-gap theory; [4] Berlyne's collative variables (novelty, complexity, incongruity, uncertainty); the curiosity- engagement-learning pathway; classroom practices that cultivate or suppress curiosity.
  • Neuroscience and cognitive psychology
    • Dopaminergic systems in novelty and anticipated reward; the interest-induced attention and memory effects (curiosity states enhance memory for incidental information); PFC involvement in curiosity-driven exploration.
  • Motivation science and positive psychology
    • Intrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan) with curiosity as a defining element; relationship to autonomy, competence, relatedness; [5] well-being correlates of trait curiosity.
  • Reinforcement learning and AI
    • Curiosity as intrinsic reward in RL agents (Schmidhuber, Pathak); exploration-exploitation trade- offs; [6] information gain and prediction-error bonuses; agents that learn in sparse-reward environments through curiosity- driven exploration.
  • Product and UX design
    • Curiosity gaps in content (headline design, trailer cutting, game-mechanic mystery); progressive disclosure in interfaces; [7] discovery features in apps; "aha" moments in onboarding.
  • Scientific practice
    • Problem choice in research as curiosity-driven; [8] the role of curiosity in serendipitous discovery; institutional structures (academic freedom, blue-sky funding) that protect curiosity-driven work.
  • Leadership and organizational behavior
    • Curiosity in hiring criteria; cultures that reward question- asking; the relationship between psychological safety and exhibited curiosity; curiosity as innovation input.

Clarity

Curiosity clarifies by forcing articulation of the knowledge-gap structure behind what is often described as "being interested." A claim like "she's curious about chemistry" resolves into "current state: basic understanding of some chemistry; perceived gap: how specific reactions actually work at the molecular level; Goldilocks assessment: she has enough background to engage but enough unknown to explore productively; information-seeking: she picks up a textbook, asks questions in lecture, runs experiments when possible; intrinsic motivation: she does this without expectation of external reward, maintaining activity when it is difficult or unrewarded; affective signature: engagement, interest, sustained attention." The clarifying force is to expose curiosity's internal structure — the gap, the zone, the behavior, the reward — and thereby identify what would sustain or extinguish it.

Manages Complexity

  • Structures educational design: curriculum sequences that open gaps slightly ahead of current knowledge, scaffolded to remain in the Goldilocks zone; pedagogies that privilege question-asking over answer- memorizing; assessment that rewards curiosity-driven inquiry alongside content mastery.
  • Frames user experience and content design: curiosity gaps used (sometimes manipulatively) in clickbait; more constructively in game design, teaching materials, mystery and detective fiction, and progressive disclosure in software.
  • Organizes institutional practice in science, creative industries, and R&D: balance of curiosity-driven and directed research; grant mechanisms that fund exploration; hiring and promotion norms that reward question-asking; career structures that protect the time needed for gap-driven work.
  • Supports individual lifelong learning: self-directed learning practices (keeping a question log, following genuine interest, rotating through fields) that exploit curiosity as a sustainable cognitive resource rather than relying on external motivation.
  • Frames reinforcement-learning agent design: intrinsic reward for prediction error, information gain, or novelty enables learning in environments where extrinsic reward is sparse — a direct engineering use of curiosity's structural insight.

Abstract Reasoning

Curiosity trains a reasoner to ask:

  • What gap in knowledge or experience is salient to the agent?
  • Is the gap in the Goldilocks zone — noticed but tractable?
  • What information-seeking behaviors would close or reduce the gap?
  • Is the behavior intrinsically motivated, or is external incentive doing the work?
  • Does the environment support sustained curiosity (safety, time, resources) or undermine it?
  • What gaps is the agent incurious about, and why?
  • Can the gap structure be modified (reframing, scaffolding) to bring a topic into the Goldilocks zone?

Knowledge Transfer

Role mappings across domains:

  • Knowledge state ↔ learner level / agent memory / prior experience / expertise baseline
  • Perceived gap ↔ question / mystery / unknown / prediction error / incomplete model
  • Goldilocks zone ↔ zone of proximal development / information- gap sweet spot / manageable novelty
  • Information-seeking behavior ↔ inquiry / exploration / question- asking / experimentation / hypothesis testing
  • Intrinsic reward ↔ aha moment / gap closure / novelty satisfaction / prediction-error reduction
  • Affective state ↔ interest / engagement / eager attention
  • Sustaining conditions ↔ psychological safety / autonomy / scaffolding / time / competence- development

A toddler investigating how a drawer opens, a graduate student choosing a thesis topic, a reinforcement-learning agent exploring a novel environment, and an engineer pulling apart a competitor's product are all doing the same structural work: knowledge state, perceived gap, Goldilocks assessment, information-seeking behavior, intrinsic reward, sustaining conditions. The same diagnostic — "what gap, what zone, what behavior, what reward, what sustains the activity?" — applies across their contexts, with the same failure modes (gap too small = boredom, gap too large = disengagement, insufficient safety = suppression) in each.

Examples

Formal/Abstract

The Loewenstein trivia paradigm (1994, canonical). [2] [9] [4] Participants are given trivia questions and asked to rate how curious they are about the answer. The manipulation varies the information-gap structure — participants who can generate partial guesses or who know neighboring facts rate themselves most curious, while those with no relevant knowledge (large gap) or with near-certain answers (small gap) rate themselves less curious. Subsequent measurements show that participants remember answers to questions they were curious about better than answers to questions of equal objective interest but lower subjective curiosity — and the memory enhancement extends to incidental information encoded during the curiosity state. This demonstrates the gap-closing reward and establishes curiosity as a measurable cognitive state with reliable behavioral and neural signatures (Gruber et al. 2014). The Berlyne collative-variables framework (1954) further demonstrates how novelty, complexity, incongruity, and uncertainty modulate the optimal-arousal level that sustains exploration.

Applied/Industry

A software engineer investigating a puzzling intermittent bug in production. [10] Current knowledge: detailed understanding of the normal code-path; the symptom occurs but mechanism is unclear. Perceived gap: why does this fail in this specific configuration, intermittently? The Goldilocks zone: the engineer has enough context to generate hypotheses (threading, race condition, upstream dependency) but not so much that the answer is obvious. The uncertainty-driven seeking: log analysis, targeted experiments, source-code reading, collaboration with teammates, reproduction attempts. Intrinsic reward: the "aha" of identifying the mechanism, independent of the fix being merged. Affective signature: engagement, sustained attention across multiple hours, returning to the problem across sessions. Sustaining conditions: a culture that permits time on debugging rather than symptom-patching, access to logs and tooling, psychological safety to ask naive questions of teammates. The structural kinship with the trivia paradigm is precise — knowledge state, gap, zone, behavior, reward, sustaining conditions — despite the shift from laboratory measurement to engineering practice.

Structural Tensions and Failure

Modes

  • T1: The Goldilocks Zone Shifts With Expertise.

    • Structural tension: As a learner's knowledge grows, the topics that produce curiosity shift — questions that were fascinating become trivial, and questions that were opaque become engaging. Curriculum and content design that do not track this shift produce disengagement at both ends (bored advanced learners, overwhelmed novices). The tension is that Goldilocks zones are local and dynamic, resisting one-size-fits-all design.
    • Common failure mode: Standardized curricula that fit the median learner and bore or overwhelm the distribution; textbook chapters pitched at a level that mismatches readers; product tutorials that work for one user segment and fail for others; one-size lecture content in mixed-expertise audiences.

  • T2: Curiosity Is Suppressible by Context.

    • Structural tension: Environments that punish questions, penalize wrong answers, or reward only predetermined outputs suppress curiosity — even when the intrinsic motivation is intact. Curiosity is a function of agent × environment; structural features (psychological safety, evaluation criteria, time pressure) can extinguish it regardless of trait predisposition.
    • Common failure mode: Classrooms where question- asking is treated as indication of not understanding; workplaces where curiosity- driven exploration is penalized as inefficiency; research cultures that reward publishable-outcome probability over exploratory promise; onboarding programs that emphasize compliance and suppress beginner's mind.

  • T3: Curiosity Gaps as Manipulation and Attention Capture.

    • Structural tension: Because curiosity produces strong information-seeking behavior, curiosity gaps can be engineered to capture attention irrespective of value to the reasoner — clickbait, algorithmic feeds exploiting information- gap dynamics, cliffhanger serial narratives. The tension is between curiosity as intrinsic motivational good and curiosity as attentional vulnerability that can be exploited.
    • Common failure mode: Individuals consuming engineered-gap content at the expense of their own priorities; media and platform incentives that reward curiosity-capture over informational value; political and advertising communication that weaponizes unresolved gaps; information overload generating curiosity fatigue and subsequent disengagement.

  • T4: Curiosity and Instrumental Goals Can Compete.

    • Structural tension: Purely curiosity-driven inquiry can pursue questions of low instrumental value at the expense of high-value but less-curious work; purely instrumental work can starve the curiosity- driven exploration that produces novel directions. The tension is continuous and requires ongoing allocation rather than single-moment resolution.
    • Common failure mode: Researchers pursuing elegant puzzles while ignoring applied needs; organizations starving R&D to meet quarterly targets and losing long-run innovation; individuals drawn by curiosity into low- priority investigations at the expense of commitments; careers that swing between curiosity-exhausted instrumentalism and instrumentally- disconnected exploration.

  • T5: Curiosity as Universally Adaptive vs Context-Dependent Risk.

    • Structural tension: While curiosity is often framed as an unambiguous good (linked to learning, creativity, well- being), it can generate substantial costs: information overload, distraction from commitments, dangerous exploration, and obsessive pursuit of irrelevant gaps. The proverb "curiosity killed the cat" captures an enduring recognition that unchecked curiosity can lead to harm. The tension is between curiosity as a foundational adaptive drive and curiosity as a liability when poorly regulated or directed toward unsafe or low-value targets. [11]
    • Common failure mode: Individuals consuming engineered-gap content at the expense of their own priorities; researchers pursuing high- novelty questions while neglecting replication and rigor; explorers venturing into genuinely dangerous territory; workers distracted by curiosity-driven rabbit holes from critical deliverables; information- seeking habits that amplify anxiety or promote misinformation through uncritical exploration.

  • T6: Curiosity as Cognitive State vs Curiosity as Personality Trait.

    • Structural tension: Curiosity appears simultaneously as a temporary state (specific curiosity about a particular question or object in a moment) and as a stable trait (dispositional curiosity, a characteristic pattern of question- asking and exploratory tendency across contexts). The Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale (Kashdan et al. 2018) distinguishes joyous exploration, deprivation sensitivity, stress tolerance, social curiosity, and thrill seeking — revealing curiosity as a multidimensional construct rather than a unitary trait. [12] The tension is between state-based measurement and intervention (can we elicit curiosity about X?) and trait-based assessment (is this person characteristically curious?), and between treating curiosity as a single variable vs recognizing its component dimensions.
    • Common failure mode: Conflating momentary curiosity with dispositional trait; assuming a single scale captures curiosity across domains; designing curricula for trait-curious learners while ignoring state-curiosity elicitation for trait-incurious ones; hiring for a single curiosity profile while missing domain-specific or context-dependent exploration strengths; measuring curiosity change without distinguishing which dimension shifted.

Structural–Framed Character

Curiosity is a hybrid on the structural–framed spectrum. Part of it is a bare pattern that means the same thing in any field; part of it is a frame — a vocabulary and a set of assumptions — inherited from the psychology of motivation. On balance it leans structural, carrying only a light frame.

The structural core is a portable control pattern: a perceived gap between current and possible knowledge generates a drive that directs behavior toward closing the gap. That information-gap-to-exploration loop is the same mechanism that drives exploration in reinforcement-learning agents and active-sampling strategies in machine learning, not only human inquiry. The frame it carries from behavioral science is relatively light: notions of an intrinsically motivating "drive," of epistemic versus diversive forms, and of a felt state presuppose a sentient agent that experiences wanting. That lends a faint subjective and evaluative coloring, but the underlying gap-detection-and-pursuit structure is recognized rather than imported, so the prime settles just on the structural side of the middle.

Substrate Independence

Curiosity is a moderately substrate-independent prime — composite 3 / 5 on the substrate-independence scale. Its signature — perceiving a knowledge gap, calibrating to a Goldilocks zone of novelty and difficulty, and being driven to explore — is reasonably structural in shape. But it is at heart a motivational state studied in psychology, education, and neuroscience, and its examples stay confined to psychology and pedagogy. Transfer to non-learning substrates is limited, so its breadth remains moderate, anchored in cognitive and educational contexts rather than lifting cleanly into other media.

  • Composite substrate independence — 3 / 5
  • Domain breadth — 3 / 5
  • Structural abstraction — 3 / 5
  • Transfer evidence — 2 / 5

Relationships to Other Primes

One-hop neighborhood: parents above, mutual partners to the right, children below.Curiositysubsumption: AttentionAttentioncomposition: UncertaintyUncertainty

Parents (2) — more general patterns this builds on

  • Curiosity is a kind of Attention

    Curiosity is a specialization of attention. The general pattern is the selective allocation of a limited cognitive resource to a subset of available information, gating what gets processed deeply. Curiosity instantiates this with the allocation criterion being a perceived information gap: the reasoner orients selective attention toward stimuli that promise to close the gap between current and possible knowledge, with the gap-resolution itself intrinsically rewarding. Berlyne and Loewenstein's information-gap framing makes curiosity the attentional bias whose targeting rule is gap salience, particularly within the Goldilocks zone of optimal challenge.

  • Curiosity presupposes Uncertainty

    Curiosity presupposes uncertainty because the information-gap that drives exploration is a specific uncertainty condition: the reasoner perceives an unknown quantity (the missing knowledge), evidence about its possible resolution, and a felt difference between current and possible states of fuller knowing. Without uncertainty's apparatus for distinguishing known from unknown and characterizing the unknown, there is no gap to feel or close. Curiosity is the motivational response to epistemic uncertainty operating in the Goldilocks zone where closure feels both possible and worth the effort.

Path to root: Curiosity → Attention

Neighborhood in Abstraction Space

Curiosity sits in a sparse region of abstraction space (99th percentile for distinctiveness): few abstractions share its structure, so a faithful description tends to retrieve it precisely rather than landing on a neighbor.

Family — Narrative, Sensemaking & Vision (11 primes)

Nearest neighbors

Computed from structural-signature embeddings · 2026-05-29

Not to Be Confused With

Curiosity must be distinguished from Novelty-Seeking, though both involve attraction to new or unfamiliar stimuli. Novelty-seeking (or sensation-seeking) is the broader motivational drive to pursue stimulating, novel, or exciting experiences for the arousal or excitement they produce. A person can be a high novelty-seeker but not particularly curious—seeking excitement through dangerous activities, novel experiences, or high-stimulation environments without much interest in understanding gaps in knowledge. Curiosity, by contrast, is specifically motivated by perceived gaps in knowledge or understanding. A curious person seeks information to close a gap in comprehension; a novelty-seeker seeks novelty for the stimulation itself. The two can overlap (learning about novel topics satisfies both curiosity and novelty-seeking), but they are distinct mechanisms. A thrill-seeker jumping out of an airplane is pursuing novelty and stimulation; an engineer reverse-engineering the parachute's design is pursuing curiosity. A museum visitor browsing for interesting-looking exhibits is novelty-seeking; a visitor reading deeply about exhibits to understand how something works is curious.

Curiosity is also distinct from Interest, though they are closely related and often confused. Interest is a broader affective state involving liking, engagement, and sustained attention to content, but it involves multiple components beyond the knowledge-gap structure that drives curiosity. Interest includes enjoyment, identity-relevance (does this matter to who I am?), and values-alignment (does this connect to what I care about?). A person can be interested in a novel without being curious—they enjoy the story, the characters, and the world, but they do not seek information about gaps; they are satisfied by the narrative as provided. Conversely, a person can be curious without being interested—seeking information to close a knowledge gap even when the content is not inherently enjoyable or identity-relevant (researching an obscure tax code because they need to understand it). Curiosity is the gap-seeking component; interest is the broader engagement and liking phenomenon.

Curiosity is also clearly distinct from Exploration, though both involve approaching and investigating unfamiliar environments or content. Exploration is a behavioral system oriented toward learning about an environment—moving through physical or conceptual space, testing boundaries, discovering patterns. A child exploring a new playground is investigating the spatial environment, discovering what activities are possible. An explorer charting unknown territory is investigating a geographic environment. Exploration can be driven by curiosity (investigating to close knowledge gaps), but it can also be driven by other motivations: finding resources, establishing safety, mapping territory for instrumental purposes. A soldier reconnoitering enemy terrain is exploring, but may not be particularly curious about the territory's history or ecology. An ant scout exploring beyond the colony is gathering information about food sources, not pursuing knowledge gaps. Curiosity is the motivational drive to close knowledge gaps; exploration is the behavioral process of moving through an environment and learning its features.

Finally, curiosity is distinct from Inquiry, though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Inquiry is a more formal, methodical, and often social process of investigating questions—asking questions systematically, gathering evidence, reasoning toward conclusions, sometimes within an institutional context like science or education. Curiosity is the motivational state that may drive inquiry, but not all inquiry is driven by curiosity—someone can conduct a systematic investigation to fulfill an assignment, earn credentials, or satisfy an external requirement, rather than from curiosity about knowledge gaps. Conversely, curiosity can exist without structured inquiry—a person can be curious about how something works but lack the tools, training, or access needed to conduct formal inquiry into it. Inquiry is a more structured, often collaborative, sometimes institutionalized process; curiosity is the underlying motivational state.

Solution Archetypes

Solution archetypes in the catalog that build on this prime — directly (this prime is a source ingredient) or as a related prime.

Built directly on this prime (2)

References

[1] Berlyne D.E. (1960). Conflict, Arousal, and Curiosity. McGraw-Hill. ↩

[2] Loewenstein G. (1994). "The Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation." Psychological Bulletin, 116(1), 75–98. ↩

[3] Ryan R.M. & Deci E.L. (2000). "Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions." Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), 54–67. ↩

[4] Berlyne D.E. (1954). "A Theory of Human Curiosity." British Journal of Psychology, 45(3), 180–191. ↩

[5] Kashdan T.B., Rose P., & Fincham F.D. (2004). "Curiosity and Exploration: Facilitating Positive Subjective Experiences and Personal Growth." Journal of Personality Assessment, 82(3), 291–305. ↩

[6] Kang M.J., Hsu M., Krajbich I.M., Loewenstein G., McClure S.M., Wang J.T., & Camerer C.F. (2009). "The Wick in the Candle of Learning: Epistemic Actions and Enculturation." Neuron, 63(4), 533–543. ↩

[7] Silvia P.J. (2008). "Interest—The Curious Emotion." Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(1), 57–60. ↩

[8] Engel S. (2011). "Children's Need to Know: Curiosity in Schools." Harvard Educational Review, 81(4), 625–645. ↩

[9] Gruber M.J., Gelman B.D., & Ranganath C. (2014). "States of Curiosity Modulate Hippocampus-Dependent Learning via the Dopaminergic Circuit." Neuron, 84(2), 486–496. ↩

[10] Murayama K., Pekrun R., Lichtenfeld S., & Vom Hofe R. (2013). "Predicting Long-Term Growth in Students' Mathematics Achievement: The Unique Contributions of Motivation and Cognitive Strategies." Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(3), 812–828. ↩

[11] Kashdan T.B. & Steger M.F. (2007). "Curiosity and Pathology: The Importance of Social Fearlessness, Distress Tolerance, and Stress Reactivity." In The Positive Psychology of Relationships (eds. Easterbrook & Schönpflug). ↩

[12] Kashdan T.B., Stiksma M.C., Disabato D.J., McKnight P.E., Bekier J., Kaji J., & Lazarus R.S. (2018). "The Five-Dimensional Curiosity Scale: Capturing the Bandwidth of Curiosity and Identifying New Dimensions and Evaluating Distinctions Between the Constructs of Openness to Experience and Inquisitiveness." Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1–20. ↩

[13] Litman J.A. & Spielberger C.D. (2003). "Measuring Epistemic and Diversive Curiosity." Journal of Personality Assessment, 80(1), 75–86.

[14] Renninger K.A. & Hidi S. (2016). The Power of Interest for Motivation and Engagement. Routledge.

[15] James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology (Vol. 1, Ch. 11: Attention). Henry Holt and Company. Foundational psychological treatise: defines attention as the mind's "taking possession" of one out of several simultaneously possible objects of thought; canonical statement of selective allocation as the essence of attention.