An Investigation of the Physiological Basis of Curiosity in Young Children and Adults

幼儿和成人好奇心生理基础的调查

• 批准号: ES/Y007611/1
• 负责人: Xiaoyun Chen
• 金额: $ 12.58万
• 依托单位: Lancaster University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FY007611%2F1
• 关键词: Investigation; Physiological; Basis; Curiosity; Young

Humans across all developmental stages exhibit pervasive curiosity-driven behaviours to seek and acquire new information. From very early on in life, young infants are sensitive to novelty in their environment and they actively and constantly explore their surroundings through their eyes and body. Adults spend time reading books, engaging with puzzles and quizzes as well as other information- seeking activities (e.g., gossip) without apparent incentives. Driven by curiosity, scientists take expeditions to discover the unknown. They dive into the deepest ocean on earth to unravel mysteries of the deep sea and have invented the Curiosity Rover for exploring the unknown space on Mars. Curiosity as an inner need for knowledge not only facilitates and shapes human cognitive development but also expands our knowledge boundaries and inspires innovation and discovery. As a key driver of cognitive development, curiosity promotes exploration, boosts learning and enhances memory. Much research suggests a few reasons for this enhancing effect including prior knowledge, curiosity anticipation and curiosity resolution. For example, when curiosity is piqued by an unsolved quiz that one might know something about, the anticipation of the answer to the quiz and the answer to the quiz (i.e., curiosity resolution) are thought to be crucial in advancing learning. In other words, the degree to which curiosity is elicited depends on an individual's prior knowledge, and once curiosity is elicited, it may create a state of anticipation, setting up a 'ready-to-learn' mode for a learner to learn, motivating the learner to explore and seek information.The key finding of my PhD thesis indeed shows that curiosity elicitation is associated with a certain arousal mechanism (the 'ready-to-learn' mode), resulting in an enhancing effect on learning, especially in young children. Most importantly, this finding has raised under-researched questions about the roles of physiological arousal and developmental change in curiosity-driven learning. Curiosity has been measured by adults' self-reporting, by infants' looking time to stimuli on a screen, by changes in pupil size, and specific brain responses to experienced information. To understand curiosity across development and in adults, new methods and analysis skills are needed. Therefore, in this Fellowship, I will apply these methods and learn new ones to conduct a follow-on study, focusing on examining the role of the physiological basis and exploring the developmental changes in curiosity-driven learning in young children and adults. More specifically, this project will involve eye-tracking, pupillometry and motion capture measures, providing a novel direction in the field by applying a multimethod approach to encapsulate the basic mechanism of curiosity, offering proof-of-concept evidence in my future ESRC New Investigator grant application.Alongside the proposed project, during the Fellowship I will disseminate my findings to academic and non-academic audiences through conference presentations, peer-reviewed publications, lay summaries as well as outreach events for early-years practitioners and the public to generate regional, national and global impacts. The Fellowship will seek to raise awareness of the role of curiosity in cognition and education, bridging the gap between research, practice and the public, increasing the practical impacts of my research.

在所有发育阶段的人类都表现出普遍的好奇心行为，以寻求和获取新信息。从生活的早期开始，年轻的婴儿在环境中对新颖性敏感，他们会积极地通过眼睛和身体探索周围的环境。成年人花时间阅读书籍，互动拼图和测验以及其他信息 - 八卦，而没有明显的激励措施。在好奇心的驱动下，科学家们进行了探险，发现未知数。他们潜入地球上最深的海洋，揭开深海的奥秘，并发明了好奇的漫游者来探索火星上未知的空间。好奇心作为知识的内在需求不仅促进和塑造人类的认知发展，而且还扩大了我们的知识界限并激发了创新和发现。作为认知发展的主要驱动力，好奇心促进了探索，增强学习并增强记忆。许多研究提出了这种增强效果的一些原因，包括先验知识，好奇心预期和好奇心解决。例如，当人们可能知道一些关于某些事情的未解决测验时，人们对测验的答案和测验的答案（即，解决好奇心解决）的期望被认为对进步学习至关重要。 In other words, the degree to which curiosity is elicited depends on an individual's prior knowledge, and once curiosity is elicited, it may create a state of anticipation, setting up a 'ready-to-learn' mode for a learner to learn, motivating the learner to explore and seek information.The key finding of my PhD thesis indeed shows that curiosity elicitation is associated with a certain arousal mechanism (the 'ready-to-learn' mode), resulting in an增强对学习的影响，尤其是在幼儿中。最重要的是，这一发现提出了关于生理唤醒和好奇心驱动的学习变化的作用的研究不足的问题。好奇心是通过成年人的自我报告，婴儿在屏幕上刺激的时间，学生大小的变化以及对经验丰富信息的特定大脑反应来衡量的。为了了解整个发展和成年人的好奇心，需要新的方法和分析技能。因此，在这个奖学金中，我将应用这些方法并学习新方法来进行后续研究，重点是研究生理基础的作用，并探索幼儿和成人的好奇心驱动学习的发展变化。更具体地说，该项目将涉及引人注目的，瞳孔计和运动捕获措施，通过采用多方法来包装好奇心的基本机制，在现场提供新的方向经过同行评审的出版物，外行摘要以及早年从业者和公众产生区域，国家和全球影响的外展活动。奖学金将寻求提高人们对好奇心在认知和教育中的作用的认识，从而弥合研究，实践与公众之间的鸿沟，从而增加了我的研究的实际影响。