The curious U: Integrating theories linking knowledge and information-seeking behavior

Many empirical studies have found a curvilinear (inverted U) relationship be- tween knowledge and curiosity, such that curiosity is induced when stimuli are neither unknown but nor too familiar. Various theoretical accounts have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. However, these theoretical accounts have been discussed independently, and researchers have failed to delineate a clear link between them. In this article, we review seven psychological and computa- tional accounts of the inverted-U relationship between knowledge and curiosity (”the U ”) and provide a single coherent framework to integrate them. According to this framework, the U emerges because it can enhance learning progress and thus maximize knowledge. We showed that some theories of curiosity address this issue by explicitly stipulating knowledge maximization as the goal of agents, and learning-progress maximization as an optimal means of achieving it (i.e., normative theories). Other theories of curiosity focus on psychological mecha- nisms or factors that drive curiosity (i.e., process theories). We demonstrated that these process-theoretic mechanisms also work in a manner that maximizes learning by signaling situations in which some relevant prior knowledge exists, but is incomplete. The implications of this framework for future theoretical work on curiosity and its connections to related phenomena are also discussed.