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Chapter 2 - From Curiosity to Interest

Accumulated Knowledge Supports Long-Term Persistence of Information-Seeking Behavior

from Part I - What Drives Humans to Seek Information?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2022

By
Ed Donnellan ,
Michiko Sakaki  and
Kou Murayama
Edited by
Irene Cogliati Dezza ,
Eric Schulz  and
Charley M. Wu
Irene Cogliati Dezza
Affiliation:
University College London
Eric Schulz
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für biologische Kybernetik, Tübingen
Charley M. Wu
Affiliation:
Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
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Summary

Information-seeking research emerges from separate traditions focusing on one-time information-seeking behavior (research on curiosity), and long-term task engagement (research on interest). However, these lines of research have been developed independently, and there has been little discussion as to how they can be understood in an integrative manner. Here we present a general framework (the reward-learning framework of knowledge acquisition) that provides a more comprehensive understanding of information-seeking behavior, effectively linking these two research traditions. This framework is based on existing reward-learning models that account for one-time information-seeking behavior, but extends them to explain its long-term development by incorporating the key role of knowledge accumulation.

Keywords

Curiosityinterestreward-learningknowledge accumulation
Type
Chapter
Information
The Drive for Knowledge
The Science of Human Information Seeking
 , pp. 31 - 52
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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