Curiosity

Curiosity (from Latin cūriōsitās, from cūriōsus "careful, diligent, curious", akin to cura "care") is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident in humans and animals. Curiosity all aspects of human development, from which derives the process of learning and desire to acquire knowledge and skill. The term curiosity can also denote the behavior, characteristic, or emotion of being curious, in regard to the desire to gain knowledge or information. Curiosity as a behavior and emotion is the driving force behind human development, such as developments in science, language, and industry. Many species display curiosity including apes, cats, and rodents. It is common to human beings at all ages from infancy through adulthood. Early definitions of curiosity call it a motivated desire for information. This motivational desire has been said to stem from a passion or an appetite for knowledge, information, and understanding. Traditional ideas of curiosity have expanded to consider the difference between perceptual curiosity, as the innate exploratory behavior that is present in all animals, and epistemic curiosity, as the desire for knowledge that is specifically attributed to humans. Daniel Berlyne recognized three classes of variables playing a role in evoking curiosity: psychophysical variables, ecological variables, and collative variables. Psychophysical variables correspond to physical intensity, ecological variables to motivational significance and task relevance. Collative variables involve a comparison between different stimuli or features, which may be actually perceived or which may be recalled from memory. Berlyne mentioned four collative variables: novelty, complexity, uncertainty, and conflict (though he suggested that all collative variables probably involve conflict). Additionally, he considered three variables supplementary to novelty: change, surprisingness, and incongruity.