Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09499-9

REVIEW ARTICLE

Process Account of Curiosity and Interest:

A Reward-Learning Perspective

Kou Murayama 1,2,3 1

& Lily FitzGibbon & Michiko Sakaki
1,2

Published online: 13 A ugust 2019

# The Author(s) 2019

Abstract
Previous studies suggested roles for curiosity and interest in knowledge acquisition and
exploration, but there has been a long-standing debate about how to define these concepts
and whether they are related or different. In this paper, we address the definition issue by
arguing that there is inherent difficulty in defining curiosity and interest, because both curiosity
and interest are naïve concepts, which are not supposed to have a priori scientific definitions.
We present a reward-learning framework of autonomous knowledge acquisition and use this
framework to illustrate the importance of process account as an alternative to advance our
understanding of curiosity and interest without being troubled by their definitions. The
framework centers on the role of rewarding experience associated with knowledge acquisition
and learning and posits that the acquisition of new knowledge strengthens the value of further
information. Critically, we argue that curiosity and interest are the concepts that they subjec-
tively construe through this knowledge-acquisition process. Finally, we discuss the implica-
tions of the reward-learning framework for education and empirical research in educational
psychology.

Keywords Intrinsicmotivation . Intrinsic rewards . Reinforcementlearning . Informationseeking .

Incentive learning . Folk psychology

Many people agree that curiosity and interest are central parts of our intellectual
behavior, playing an essential role in our daily and professional life. The importance
of nurturing curiosity and interest in classrooms has been repeatedly emphasized in
both academic and lay literature (e.g., Dewey 1913; Kohn 1986; Pink 2010; Renninger

* Kou Murayama
[email protected]

1
School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Earley Gate,
Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AL, UK
2
Research Institute, Kochi University of Technology, Kami, Kochi, Japan
3
Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen,
Germany
876 Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895

and Hidi 2016), and enhancing student interest and curiosity has been one of the
primary goals in many educational programs (e.g., Engel 2015; Harackiewicz et al.
2012; Hulleman and Harackiewicz 2009). Indeed, a vast number of empirical studies
over the past decades have revealed the beneficial effects of curiosity and interest on a
variety of learning outcomes such as self-regulation and academic performance (e.g.,
Hidi 1990; Sansone et al. 2010; von Stumm et al. 2011).
Despite the abundance of literature, the distinction between curiosity and interest
has been a source of frustration for researchers working on these concepts. Re-
searchers have discussed the similarities and differences in curiosity and interest
(Grossnickle 2014; Jirout and Klahr 2012; Silvia 2006), but they failed to reach
agreed-upon definitions. Researchers often use these terminologies interchangeably,
or they strategically use only one of the terminologies. However, such practices are
frequently discouraged by editors who request precise and distinctive definitions.
These requests to separately define curiosity and interest often put researchers in a
difficult position. On the one hand, it is true that we need precise and accurate
definitions of concepts to conduct scientific work. On the other hand, it may not be
easy to provide a definition that everyone agrees with.
The current article aims to address the definition issue of curiosity and interest in the
following way. First, we point out that the difficulty of defining curiosity and interest lies
in the fact that they reflect our subjective construction of an underlying psychological
process (i.e., they are naïve concepts). To make our point, we propose a process account of
curiosity and interest. Specifically, we present a reward-learning framework of autono-
mous knowledge acquisition, arguing that curiosity and interest do not have unique
characteristics that define them, but that they are what people subjectively construct to
capture some aspects of this knowledge-acquisition process. Second, by presenting the
reward-learning framework, we highlight the importance of reward learning in the
knowledge-acquisition process underlying curiosity and interest. This framework is great-
ly inspired by prominent theorizations of curiosity and interest in psychology (e.g., Hidi
and Renninger 2006; Loewenstein 1994) and neuroscience (e.g., Gottlieb and Oudeyer
2018) and represents our preliminary attempt to provide insight into how a wide variety of
ideas of curiosity and interest can be understood in a coherent manner.

A Process Account as an Alternative Approach to Understand Curiosity

and Interest

Curiosity and interest are both naïve (folk) concepts in their origin which are unlikely
to have a priori objective definitions. Long before psychologists initiated the scientific
endeavor to understand curiosity and interest, these words had been used by people in
daily life. People daily use the terms “curiosity” and “interest” to describe distinct
subjective feelings that are different from other mental states. These subjective
feelings are likely to reflect a certain set of behavioral, psychological, and neural
processes. However, lay people do not normally have the capability to directly access
these mechanisms (Nisbett and Wilson 1977); they intuitively and loosely construct
the concepts of curiosity and interest from their subjective feelings. Therefore, there is
no reason to expect that curiosity and interest have a priori essential definitive
characteristics. Thus, in our view, searching for correct definitions of curiosity and
Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895 877

interest may not be a very fruitful task (see Kidd and Hayden 2015, for a similar
point), because there is unlikely to be a definite right answer to this type of
question.1
Note that by calling curiosity and interest naïve concepts, we never mean that studying
curiosity and interest is futile. Researchers can still examine the behavioral, psychological, and
neural processes underlying these constructs. This has significant theoretical and practical
implications. Indeed, previous theoretical and empirical work on curiosity and interest has
provided critical insights into these mechanisms (e.g., Hidi and Renninger 2006; Loewenstein
1994; Silvia 2001), leading to greatly improved understanding of the roles or curiosity and
interest in various educational issues. However, even if we were able to correctly specify the
psychological and neural mechanisms, our naïve perceptions of curiosity and interest would
likely still be too subjective and ambiguous to map directly and precisely onto these mecha-
nisms. In other words, understanding the underlying processes would not necessarily tell us the
correct definition of curiosity and interest.
To instantiate our point, in this article, we present a reward-learning framework of autono-
mous knowledge acquisition (for a full-fledged version of the framework, see Murayama,
2019a) as a process account of curiosity and interest. The framework centers on reward learning
as the key to understand sustainable knowledge acquisition. The critical role of reward
processing in curiosity and interest has been a recurrent idea in the literature (Berlyne 1971;
Panksepp 1998) and has received increased attention in the recent literature of cognitive
neuroscience (Gruber et al. 2014; Kang et al. 2009; Kidd and Hayden 2015; Murayama et al.
2010; Sakaki et al. 2018). However, the role of reward processing in curiosity and interest has
been somewhat overlooked in the literature of educational psychology, except for a few notable
exceptions (e.g., Ainley and Hidi 2014; Hidi 2016; Renninger and Hidi 2016). But as we will
see, it is essential to incorporate the idea of reward learning to explain a variety of aspects of the
knowledge-acquisition process (see also General Discussion on this issue). Our reward-learning
framework is greatly inspired by the neuroscientific literature mentioned above, as well as by a
number of influential theories on curiosity and interest in psychology, including the knowledge-
gap theory of curiosity (Loewenstein 1994), the four-phase model of interest development (Hidi
and Renninger 2006; for an updated version, see Renninger and Hidi 2016), the expectancy-
value approach to interest (Schiefele 2009; Wigfield and Cambria 2010), and the self-regulation
of motivation model (Sansone and Thoman 2005). These existing theories provided consider-
able insights into the psychological process underlying curiosity and interest. Thus, our reward-
learning framework can be considered as an integration of these neuroscientific and psycho-
logical theories on curiosity and interest.
Critically, however, the current framework attempts to explain curiosity and interest with a
knowledge-acquisition process that does not include curiosity or interest as a constituent
element. Our argument is that curiosity and interest are concepts that people subjectively
constructed or interpreted to capture some aspects of the knowledge-acquisition process; as
such, once we have explained the precise neural and psychological processes that underpin
knowledge acquisition, it is no longer necessary to assume curiosity or interest in the
psychological process itself. Our framework also sheds light on how we should approach

1
Some statistical techniques (e.g., factor analysis, cluster analysis) allow us to decide coherent categorizations of
our subjective beliefs (when using self-reported questions) or psychological processes (when using psychological
tasks). These categories may be labeled as curiosity or interest. However, it is very difficult to find external
criteria to prove that this labeling is ontologically correct.
878 Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895

the various operational conceptualizations of curiosity and interest that researchers have made
in the literature (for reviews, Grossnickle 2014; Renninger and Hidi 2011); these operational
conceptualizations can be considered as important parts of the knowledge-acquisition process,
but as you will see, our framework indicates that there is no need to decide on which
conceptualization is the right one. We suggest that, to understand students’ motivation and
learning in education, our primary attention and effort should be paid to this knowledge-
acquisition process, rather than defining curiosity or interest themselves. We think the current
state of confusion about curiosity and interest arises because researchers started from these
naïve concepts as if they had some definitive features. But we should change the order of
thinking—we should start from thinking about how we can sustain the knowledge-acquisition
process, and then turn to how this process maps onto our various views on curiosity and
interest.

A Reward-Learning Framework of Autonomous Knowledge Acquisition

General Framework

Figure 1 presents the proposed framework that explains how people engage in sustainable
knowledge acquisition (Murayama, 2019a). Essentially, the framework posits that the acquisition
of knowledge serves as a reward and that the expected feeling of reward is the key modulator of
our information-seeking behavior. When gaps in knowledge are recognized, people initiate
information-seeking behavior because they expect the positive rewarding value of acquiring
the knowledge. The information-seeking behavior results in acquisition of knowledge, which is
integrated into people’s pre-existing knowledge base. Importantly, the acquisition generates the
actual feeling of reward, and this rewarding feeling strengthens the further information-seeking
behavior by increasing the expected reward value of new information. Furthermore, the expanded
knowledge base also facilitates the awareness of further knowledge gaps, motivating additional

Extraneous factors
(random encounters,
environmental structure)

Awareness of a
Moderators (expectancy knowledge gap
belief, perceived cost, Expected reward value
personality traits, of new informaon
emoonal valence etc.) (Generaon of
Informaon seeking
(Surprise) new quesons)
behavior
Comparison

Acquision of Rewarding
knowledge experience
(Value signal)

Knowledge-base
Saaon
Fig. 1 A reward-learning framework of autonomous knowledge acquisition
Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895 879

information-seeking behavior. Consequently, the process forms a positive feedback loop, en-
abling a sustainable knowledge acquisition/seeking process of learning.
The framework is based on reward-learning (or reinforcement-learning) models (Dayan and
Niv 2008; Montague and Berns 2002), but we incorporated several features that are specific to
the knowledge-acquisition process (e.g., new knowledge provides room for further knowledge
gaps). The reinforcement-learning model is an extension of modern operant learning theory
(Berridge 2004; Dickinson and Balleine 2002) and posits that our behavior is guided by the
rewarding value of the behavior that is computed and updated through a reinforcement
process. Notably, although some researchers (especially researchers in education) tend to use
“reward” to refer only to extrinsic incentives such as food or money (Kohn 1993),
reinforcement-learning theory is not concerned whether the rewarding value comes from
extrinsic incentives or more internally generated values (often called “intrinsic rewards”; see
Murayama 2019b). In our framework, we use the term reward in this general sense, rather than
referring to tangible rewards such as money. The stages of the model are described in more
detail in the following sections.

Knowledge Gaps and Information-Seeking Behavior

We begin by describing the core knowledge-acquisition process as it is specified in our

framework. We start from the state where people become aware of the lack of knowledge
on a specific topic (e.g., how to solve quadratic equations in mathematics). This is also
equivalent to the state of uncertainty. As Loewenstein (1994) argued in his influential
knowledge-gap theory of curiosity, when a knowledge gap is made salient, people are
motivated to initiate information-seeking behavior to acquire the knowledge. The degree to
which people are motivated for information-seeking behavior depends on the “expected”
rewarding value of the information (e.g., “how pleasant it would be to understand the solution
of quadratic equation?”). If the knowledge is not felt to be rewarding enough, there is little
motivation for information-seeking behavior.
Information-seeking behavior is likely to lead to acquisition of knowledge. It should be
noted that, in the context of classroom education, information or knowledge may be provided
externally (e.g., the solution was simply taught by a teacher), which does not involve students’
explicit information-seeking behavior. However, even in such a case, whether the student
understands the externally provided information depends on the extent to which the student
actively processes the information, and in this respect, students still mentally perform infor-
mation seeking. In other words, information-seeking behavior does not always mean explicit
and visible behavior, but it also includes mental sense making process.

Knowledge Acquisition and Rewarding Experience

Upon the acquisition of new knowledge, people experience the feeling of reward (e.g.,
excitement produced when you think you understood how to solve the quadratic equation).
Indeed, some studies have shown that closing knowledge gaps, for example by discovering
what a blurred picture represents, activates the reward network in the brain (Brydevall et al.
2018; Jepma et al. 2012; Ligneul et al. 2017). This rewarding experience is at the core of the
sustainable knowledge-acquisition process, because this experience reinforces the value of
new knowledge, motivating further information-seeking behavior (explained in more detail
later). The magnitude of this rewarding feeling is of course influenced by the (subjective)
880 Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895

amount of knowledge the person gained (the magnitude of uncertainty reduction) but also by
whether and how people value the new knowledge in light of their pre-existing knowledge
base (the value signal; shown as a dashed arrow in Fig. 1).
Here we refer to the knowledge base as the compound of person’s pre-existing knowledge,
goals, and experiences (e.g., a student’s general knowledge about algebra, their reasons for
studying algebra, their personal experiences in mathematics class). In this respect, the knowl-
edge base can be also called the self-scheme (Conway and Pleydell-Pearce 2000). Importantly,
the rewarding value of every piece of new information is gauged in relation to this knowledge
base—“is the new information consistent with my future goal?” and “how much is the new
information related to my pre-existing knowledge?”. For example, understanding how to solve
quadratic equations should provide some rewarding experience to many people but this would
be more so if they want to study mathematics in their future career or they can connect the
knowledge to other domains such as physics. It is important to note that the newly acquired
knowledge would also contribute to the knowledge base, and it could boost the value of new
information in the next learning cycle (e.g., learning a new way of factoring to solve quadratic
equations can increase the value of solving more quadratic equations).

Formation of the Positive Feedback Loop

After this phase, two psychological mechanisms operate to strengthen further information-
seeking behavior. First, the rewarding experience updates the expected value of future new
information, which would influence information-seeking behavior in the future. According to
the reinforcement-learning model, the amount of the change in the expected reward value is
determined by so-called reward prediction errors—the difference between the expected reward
value and the actual reward value that individuals obtained. In other words, reward prediction
errors represent how much individuals are “surprised” by the new reward. Similarly, in our
reward learning model of knowledge acquisition, we suppose that the amount of change in the
reward value of the information is (at least partially) determined by how surprising the new
information was. Marvin and Shohamy (2016) called this surprise signal “information predic-
tion errors.” Formally, information prediction errors are defined as the reward value of the new
information relative to the expected reward value of the new information. If the obtained
information is unexpected, information prediction errors are positive (i.e., individuals are
surprised) and increase the expected rewarding value of future new information. Indeed,
previous research has indicated that new information-seeking behavior is enhanced when
new knowledge is inconsistent with their expectation (high confidence error; e.g., when people
learned that the statement “chameleons match their color to their environment” is false; Vogl
et al. in press). On the other hand, if the new information is not more than what people
expected, people tend to be disappointed and the value of new information may be undermined
(e.g., when a student found out that solving a quadratic equation requires no more skills than
just applying a formula or when people learned that the solution of a detective story is nothing
more than what they expected).
Expanded knowledge base also triggers the second mechanism that strengthens information
seeking behavior. Specifically, in real learning situations, the acquisition of new knowledge
and the expanded knowledge base often creates more questions, which leads to further
awareness of knowledge gaps. This notion is pointed out by Renninger (2000) and is nicely
phrased by Loewenstein (1994) as “new information provides ever-changing idea of what
there is to be known” (p. 89). For example, upon understanding the solution of quadratic
Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895 881

equations, students may wonder whether it is possible to solve cubic equations in a similar
manner. Indeed, previous studies suggested positive relations between domain knowledge
(e.g., knowledge about psychology, which was assessed by a test asking factual matters in
psychology) and domain-specific interest (assessed by self-reported questions; e.g., Alexander
et al. 1995; Lawless and Kulikowich 2006). Note that this feature does not exist for standard
reinforcement learning with extrinsic incentives. Once extrinsic rewards are consumed (i.e.,
the food was eaten), hunger is immediately satiated, and consumption does not normally
produce further appetite. In that respect, reward-learning processes for knowledge and extrin-
sic rewards are critically different, although both learning processes are governed by the same
computational mechanism.
Importantly, these two processes explain why people can sustain or even accelerate their
commitment to the learning process over time—knowledge acquisition has an inherent
mechanism to self-boost the feeling of expected reward value of information as learning
progresses. In other words, the knowledge-acquisition process involves cyclical generation
of intrinsic rewards through the formation of a positive feedback loop.

Moderators of Information-Seeking Behavior

Of course, this positive reinforcement process does not always work in reality. In classrooms,
for example, we observe many students who do not sustain the knowledge-acquisition process.
Clearly, there are some critical factors that moderate the process. Some such factors are noted
in Fig. 1. For example, certain general personality traits (e.g., sensation seeking, conscien-
tiousness) play a role here. In addition, people’s decision to initiate information-seeking
behavior should strongly depend on one’s perceived ability to acquire the information (expec-
tancy belief) and its cost. If one does not believe that s/he has sufficient ability to acquire the
information (e.g., “I am not confident that I will understand the logic behind quadratic
equations”) or that the behavior is too costly (e.g., “it would require a lot of effort to understand
the solution”), s/he would be discouraged to initiate information-seeking behavior2,3.
Another important moderating factor is the emotional valence of the expected information.
Our motivation to seek information is often compromised by the potential negative valence of
the information (see Hertwig and Engel 2016, for a review). For example, some pregnant
women may want to avoid taking prenatal testing that informs them of the potential risk of
genetic disease (e.g., Down syndrome) for their expected child. In fact, Charpentier et al.
(2018) empirically showed that people tend to seek positively valenced information more
frequently than negatively valenced information (see also Marvin and Shohamy 2016).
Although this sort of situation is less common in education, it is possible that students are
reluctant to seek information for the materials that include negatively valenced information
(e.g., stories of holocaust).

2
The proposed framework does not assume that people consciously evaluate and make a decision. In fact, large
part of these evaluation and decision making process may be automatic.
3
The modulation of perceived ability and cost factors makes it possible for people to seek information that would
maximize the expected gain (i.e., learnability) of knowledge. This idea is consistent with a recent model of
curiosity (or exploration behavior) that underscores the importance of learning progress through information
seeking (Gottlieb et al. 2013). We speculate that the classical optimal arousal model of curiosity proposed by
Berlyne (1960) (see Kidd et al. 2012 for a recent empirical investigation), which claims that people avoid stimuli
that are too boring (easy) or too complex (difficult), can also be explained by this learning progress account.
882 Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895

It is worth noting that these factors—perceived expectancy (including skills), perceived

cost, and expected valence of information—are also subjective beliefs that are updated in the
course of learning. For example, if one fails to acquire knowledge, the expectancy belief may
be decreased and, as a result, the person may not feel motivated to initiate information-seeking
behavior again (Durik et al. 2015; Tanaka and Murayama 2014). This point implies that the
knowledge-acquisition process in real life involves constant on-the-fly calculations and inte-
gration of the expected reward value of information, the perceived ability to find the infor-
mation, the perceived cost of information-seeking behavior, and the expected valence of
information. This computation process may well be automatic and unconscious. Although
our framework highlights the importance of the reward value of information, a full under-
standing of the process of knowledge acquisition that is applicable to practical settings such as
education would require a comprehensive description of this dynamic computational process.
In addition, after gaining knowledge, there is the possibility that a person does not find any
more information gaps, subjectively feeling that s/he completely understands the topic. This
“knowledge satiation” is likely to halt the task engagement process. This situation is common
when curiosity and interest are empirically examined using controlled materials such as trivia
questions (e.g., Marvin and Shohamy 2016; Murayama and Kuhbandner 2011). For most
participants, the answers to trivia questions are indeed trivial and have little practical value.
They are normally prepared as stand-alone materials that can trigger and satisfy curiosity by
themselves. As a result, the knowledge of the answer is likely to cause satiation. Even in real
learning contexts, however, students may sometimes stop learning because they, often falsely,
believe that they have mastered the materials, even if they actually have not (e.g., students may
feel that they understand perfectly how to solve quadratic equations when they are presented
with the formula but they actually do not understand the logic behind it). In fact, literature in
metacognition has repeatedly shown that learners are inaccurate and optimistic about their
mastery of learning materials (e.g., learning foreign words), often terminating their learning
behavior prematurely (e.g., Kornell and Bjork 2008; Murayama et al. 2016).

Extraneous Factors That Influence Awareness of Knowledge Gaps

We believe awareness of knowledge gaps mainly comes from the learning process (i.e.,
expanded knowledge base), but there are some other factors contributing to this awareness.
For example, we are often motivated to seek information for the things that we came across
just by chance (e.g., an interesting book seen through the window of a book store). Such
encounters may appear random, but this process is also constrained by the environment in
which people are placed. For example, if a child is raised in a family of piano players, the child
has much higher chance of encountering novel information about piano music. In that respect,
this is not a completely random process but is still an important extra means of becoming
aware of new knowledge gaps.

How the Framework Can Explain Different Definitions/Types of Curiosity

and Interest?

Again, a critical feature of the process framework presented in Fig. 1 is that the framework
does not include “curiosity” or “interest” as an element, indicating that there is no absolute
need to assume such constructs to explain sustained knowledge acquisition, although we
Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895 883

acknowledge that our framework is still preliminary. We believe that what people naïvely call
curiosity and interest are things that they subjectively construe through this knowledge-
acquisition process.
Researchers have conceptualized curiosity and interest in many different ways (for detailed
reviews, see Grossnickle 2014; Renninger and Hidi 2011; Renninger and Hidi 2016). For
example, some researchers argue that interest is an emotion (Reeve et al. 2015; Silvia 2008)
and other researchers regard interest as a collection of values (Gati 1991; Schiefele 2009).
Some researchers define curiosity as a feeling or emotion arising from a knowledge gap
(Loewenstein 1994) while others consider curiosity as resulting from or as part of intrinsic
motivation (Day 1971; Deci and Ryan 1985; White 1959). We agree with the importance of
providing operational definitions of these concepts. In light of our framework, these elements
are captured by components or outcomes of the knowledge-acquisition process. For example,
value belief is one of the important factors that determine the reward value of new knowledge.
There are multiple places where emotion is generated in our framework (and researchers have
different opinions on which emotion should be called interest/curiosity); for example, the
rewarding feeling after knowledge acquisition may be considered as an emotion. Subjective
experience should also arise when knowledge gap is made salient, and this may also be
considered an emotion. Importantly, our framework makes it clear that these different concep-
tualizations are all matters of labeling (which part should be labeled as curiosity/interest), and it
is not essential to determine which label mappings are correct or not, under the aim of
understanding how people sustain learning and engagement; they are all important parts of
the knowledge-acquisition process.
What is the difference between curiosity and interest? Again, this is a matter of labeling in
our view but generally speaking, literature on curiosity seems to focus on the series of
processes in which awareness of a knowledge gap leads to information-seeking behavior
(Kidd and Hayden 2015; Loewenstein 1994; Sakaki et al. 2018). On the other hand, research
on interest seems to be more diverse: Some researchers are mainly concerned with the maturity
of this engagement process (i.e., how the feedback loop is completed; Alexander et al. 1995;
Hidi and Renninger 2006; Krapp and Prenzel 2011), whereas some others focus more on
emotional aspects in the process (Silvia 2006). The strength of our framework is that,
regardless of how researchers define curiosity or interest, the framework is clear that both
curiosity and interest are integrated in the same knowledge-acquisition process, providing a
specific picture about how curiosity and interest can be related. For example, Markey and
Loewenstein (2014) and Renninger and Hidi (2016) argued that curiosity is distinct from
interest in that curiosity is a short-term psychological state that would disappear on closing the
momentary knowledge gap, whereas interest represents long-term commitment on a particular
topic. We are fine with these definitions. From our perspective, however, it is important to be
clearer that curiosity (defined by these researchers) is still an essential element of long-term
knowledge-acquisition process: People build knowledge as a consequence of these numerous
curious experiences, and the accumulation of curious experiences would be the basis for self-
generation of intrinsic rewards, which makes sustainable engagement possible. We believe
both Markey and Loewenstein (2014) and Renninger and Hidi (2016) share a similar view
with us, but by demarcating a borderline between curiosity and interest, this critical point may
be somewhat obscured.
Beyond the general distinction between curiosity and interest, there have been attempts to
identify different types and dimensions of curiosity and interest. In the following, we will show
how our process framework can explain these typologies.
884 Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895

Situational Interest vs. Individual Interest

A developmental continuum of situational interest and individual interest was originally

proposed by Hidi and Renninger (2006) in their four-phase model of interest development,
and it has been one of the most influential theories in the literature. People are said to have
situational interest when they initiate and sustain their learning behavior, but it also depends on
available resources such as social relationships and environmental resources. On the other
hand, people are said to have more developed individual interest when they can value the
opportunity to (re)engage in a task and can self-generate interest for that task, engaging in
enduring learning behavior voluntarily and autonomously.
As noted earlier, our reward-learning framework is influenced by the four-phase model of
interest development as a psychological theory to explain long-term engagement (note also
that the authors discussed the role of rewarding experiences in some papers; see Ainley and
Hidi 2014; Hidi 2016; Renninger and Hidi 2016). Therefore, it would not be surprising that
our framework can accommodate the distinction between situational interest and individual
interest. But critically, the framework does so by elaborating more closely the reward-learning
process behind these two distinct developmental phases of interest. Specifically, at the
beginning of the learning process, the feedback loop is unstable and easily disrupted (thus
requires external input or support) as the value of knowledge acquisition is not well developed
and knowledge base is not rich enough to generate new questions (e.g., students may be
intrigued by the fact that quadratic equations produce a U-shaped curve but this initial interest
easily wanes unless students really understand why it does). Also, at this early phase, the
knowledge-acquisition process is more likely to be driven by chance encounters. Once the
feedback loop is established, developed knowledge generates a number of new questions and
adds value to behaviors aimed towards answering such questions, allowing the system to
autonomously and continuously self-generate the feeling of reward (e.g., students who deeply
understand the shape of quadratic equations may autonomously seek the way to graph cubic
equations). That is, people store the value of the knowledge. Situational interest and individual
interest can be interpreted as the respective phases of this knowledge-acquisition process.

Specific Curiosity vs. Diversive Curiosity

Berlyne (1960) distinguished two types of curiosity—specific curiosity and diversive curiosity.
Specific curiosity involves detailed investigation of novel stimuli, whereas diversive curiosity is
more unspecified exploration of the environment to find novel stimuli. Specific curiosity serves to
decrease uncertainty whereas diversive curiosity is aimed at increasing uncertainty. This distinction
is intuitive and has been widely adopted especially in the studies that develop self-report measures of
curiosity (e.g., Kashdan et al. 2009; Litman and Spielberger 2003; Mussel 2013).
In our model, specific curiosity is straightforward—a label assigned to information-seeking
behavior to close a knowledge gap. This is consistent with the process of curiosity that
Loewenstein (1994) described (e.g., a situation in which a person works on a puzzle). But
what about diversive curiosity? From our perspective, there is no pure exploratory motivation
to increase knowledge gaps, as all of our epistemic behavior is, either explicitly or implicitly,
guided by the desire to close a knowledge gap or to gain information (see Murayama, 2019a
for more elaborated discussion). Think about a student who scans through a book shelf of
detective stories in a library without having a specific book in his/her mind. This behavior
seems like a random exploration, but the close scrutiny of the behavior reveals that it is not that
Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895 885

simple. Specifically, the psychological mechanisms behind this scanning behavior can be
explained by his/her motivation to close the generic knowledge gap or gain information
(and ultimately feel rewarded) on the genre of detective stories.
Think also about infant’s exploration behavior with which they seek novel and arousing
stimuli. This is considered as one of the typical manifestations of diversive curiosity. Even in
this situation, for every moment, infants’ behavior is guided by the expected reward value of
information that is afforded by the stimulus they are confronting, and in that respect, their
behavior is still driven by a knowledge gap (i.e., difference between expected amount of
information and current information). Indeed, this type of exploration behavior has been well
explained by the existing reward-learning models of information seeking (e.g., Oudeyer et al.
2007). In contrast to specific curiosity, the content of information one expects for diversive
curiosity is more generic, and in that respect, specific curiosity and diversive curiosity may be
distinguished. In our view, however, the generality of expected information is on a continuum
(i.e., not a categorical matter), and however general/specific the information is, the basic
psychological process underlying knowledge acquisition is the same. Therefore, we do not
believe that there is a hard borderline between these two types of curiosity.

Dimensions or Domain Specificity

Researchers also proposed that different types of curiosity can be distinguished by what it is that the
curiosity is directed towards. For example, Berlyne (1954) distinguished epistemic curiosity and
perceptual curiosity. Epistemic curiosity refers to the curiosity triggered by conceptual stimuli,
whereas perceptual curiosity refers to the curiosity aroused by sensory stimulation (e.g., ambiguous
pictures). Some other researchers also identified social or interpersonal curiosity (i.e., curiosity for
social relationship) as distinct types of curiosity (Kashdan et al. 2018; Litman and Pezzo 2007).
From our perspective, the basic knowledge acquisition and maintenance process would be
the same, regardless of the stimulus type. Even for perceptual curiosity, awareness of ambi-
guity of sensory stimuli requires knowledge, and such sensory curiosity may be a basis of our
curiosity about more complex stimuli (e.g., abstract arts, see Van de Cruys and Wagemans
2011). Therefore, rather than considering them as completely separate types of curiosity, we
believe it would be more promising to search for potential common psychological mechanisms
underlying these different types of curiosity.
Note, however, that this claim does not refute any previous attempts to develop a scale to
distinguish individual differences in these distinct types of curiosity. It is also true that there are
huge individual differences in the types of topics people are curious about (see Fastrich et al.
2017, for a quantitative demonstration). Domain specificity in curiosity and interest (i.e.,
individual differences in the topics people are curious about/interested in) is likely to exist.
One important future question may be to consider why domain specificity exists (rather than
asking how these domains are different), despite the domain general psychological mechanism
underlying curiosity and interest. We speculate that the self-boosting property of curiosity and
interest would be the key to address this question but further investigation would be needed to
empirically address the issue.

Traits

Both curiosity and interest posit state-like forms and more enduring, trait-like forms. Indeed, in the
literature of personality, there are several personality scales that are closely related to some aspects of
886 Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895

curiosity or interest, such as sensation seeking (Zuckerman 1979), need for cognition (Cacioppo and
Petty 1982), and novelty seeking (Cloninger et al. 1993). Curiosity and interest are also related to
two of the Big-Five factors (McCrae and Costa 1987): openness to experience and conscientious-
ness in many respects (see also Trautwein et al. 2009). In the field of occupational psychology,
researchers have identified several different categories of vocational interests depending on people’s
general preference for different types of jobs (Gati 1991).
Importantly, most of these trait-level constructs can be considered as representing the gener-
alized reward-value of knowledge in our proposed framework. For example, novelty seeking can
be considered as the general expected reward value for the acquisition of new information
(rewarding value for novelty may be modulated by the noradrenergic system; see Sakaki et al.
2018). Need for cognition can be regarded as the general action value for information-seeking
behavior (see also the discussion on “Learned industriousness,” Eisenberger 1992). Vocational
interests are the general rewarding value for the different types of learning and knowledge. These
generalized reward values may in large part be explained by the generalization process in reward
learning (Wimmer et al. 2012). As individuals go through the cycle of knowledge acquisition
repeatedly, they develop a default rewarding value of these different processes, forming a context
independent, personality-like curiosity or interest. This idea is consistent with a social-cognitive
view of personality development (Williams and Cervone 1998) and explains why curiosity and
interest can be described as both state and trait (Grossnickle 2014).

Curiosity as an Aversive State

In the literature of curiosity, there has been a recurrent idea that curiosity involves an aversive
state, and people seek information to eliminate the aversive feelings (i.e., “relief” of curiosity).
For example, Berlyne (1954) approached curiosity from drive reduction theory and argued that
curiosity produces an uncomfortable state of uncertainty. From this perspective, people are
motivated for new information because it would reduce uncertainty and eventually the
uncomfortable feeling associated with uncertainty. Loewenstein (1994) also argued that the
awareness of knowledge gaps shifts people’s attention to the lack of knowledge, and this
aversive feeling of deprivation is the driving force of people’s curious behavior (i.e., loss
aversion). One of the reasons why this idea has attracted popularity is that it can explain strong
seductive power of curiosity, which sometimes lead people to make irrational decisions (e.g.,
Hsee and Ruan 2016; Lau et al. 2018; Oosterwijk 2017). However, this idea is still contro-
versial and empirical evidence is not conclusive (Ruan et al. 2018; Silvia 2006). For example,
Jepma et al. (2012) found that presentation of ambiguous pictures (i.e., material that is likely to
trigger perceptual curiosity) activates the anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insular cortex.
As these brain areas are associated with negative arousal states, the authors indicated that
perceptual curiosity involves aversive mental states. However, the anterior cingulate cortex and
anterior insular cortex have been implicated in many different functions (including reward
expectation, see Shidara and Richmond 2002), and therefore, it is not easy to derive a strong
conclusion. To our knowledge, there is little direct and conclusive evidence supporting the
aversive nature of curiosity.4

4
A potential reason for the lack of empirical support is that, even if curiosity indeed involves an aversive state,
the state of aversiveness is inherently confounded with the positive reward value of expected information. Future
empirical research should be more mindful to disentangle these two confounded elements in the state of curiosity
(e.g., Noordewier and van Dijk 2017).
Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895 887

In the literature of reward learning, the idea of drive reduction and satiation is no longer a
viable account for motivated behavior (Berridge 2004; Dickinson and Balleine 2002). Instead,
to explain strong urges or craving of motivated behavior, recent researchers have proposed an
incentive salience model of learning, arguing that expected reward value consists of two
distinct appetitive components—liking and wanting (Berridge 2004). Liking refers to hedonic
experiences or subjective feelings associated with rewards or expected rewards. On the other
hand, wanting (also called incentive salience) is purely an incentive motivational value (i.e.,
feeling of craving or vigor) and this state of wanting is often triggered during the expectation of
a reward (perhaps through tonic dopamine release; Niv et al. 2007). Research in neuroscience
has provided support of the distinction of liking and wanting in the reward learning process
(Berridge 2012).
The proposed framework of autonomous knowledge acquisition can naturally incorporate
the distinction as our framework is a reward-learning model. Specifically, wanting and liking
can be regarded as two distinct components of the expected reward value in the framework. In
other words, when people become aware of knowledge gap, information-seeking behavior
may be driven by two different components of expected reward value—incentive salience of
new information (“I crave the information!”) and expected positive feeling about the infor-
mation (“It would be pleasant if I knew that”).
A nice feature of this extension is that the framework can explain both the hedonic
experience and the strong motivational power of the knowledge-acquisition process, without
making an unnecessary assumption that the knowledge-acquisition process can involve an
aversive feeling and avoidance-based motivation, which has been the main source of the
controversy. Theoretically speaking, wanting is a valence-free pure motivational vigor
(Berridge 2004). Some animal research has suggested that the state of wanting involves
aversive facial expressions (e.g., Berridge and Valenstein 1991), but the evidence is still not
conclusive. Our perspective is that viewing incentive salience as a pure motivational factor
would provide a more parsimonious and intuitive account for curiosity-related behavior.5

Intrinsic Motivation

The difference between intrinsic motivation and interest is another matter of debate. Quite a
few researchers use them almost as synonymous, whereas others suggest that interest is one
constituent element of intrinsic motivation or a “source” of intrinsic motivation (e.g., Deci and
Ryan 1985). We believe that these discrepancies come from the fact that researchers tend to
conceptualize interest and intrinsic motivation as entities, ratherthan processes. In our view,
intrinsic motivation refers to the internally generated rewarding process that is not dependent
on extrinsic incentives (Murayama 2019b; Oudeyer and Kaplan 2009). This is exactly the self-
rewarding process we have laid out in this paper. Therefore, it is an arbitrary matter which part
of the process we should call interest or intrinsic motivation. In other words, their relationship
simply depends on how you define them.

5
Litman and his colleagues also argued that the liking and wanting components are the two underlying processes
of curiosity (Litman 2005; Litman and Jimerson 2004). However, they called the wanting component
deprivation-type (D-type) curiosity, retaining the aversive state and avoidance-based motivation arising from
the state of deprivation as one of the definitive features of curiosity. This may be because their model was
originally motivated by Loewenstein’s (1994) knowledge gap theory (Litman and Jimerson 2004), and the
concept of wanting was integrated after D-type of curiosity was proposed (Litman 2005).
888 Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895

General Discussion

The current paper presents a reward-learning framework of autonomous knowledge acquisition,

with the aim to conceptualize curiosity and interest as the naïve constructs emerging from a
knowledge-acquisition process. Our proposed framework seems to be able to capture many
aspects of what people naïvely call curiosity and interest, as well as some theoretically
important constructs discussed in the literature (e.g., situational interest vs. individual interest,
state vs. trait curiosity). Importantly, by focusing on the knowledge-acquisition process rather
than the constructs of curiosity and interest themselves, we can bypass debates on the defini-
tions of curiosity and interest and facilitate constructive discussions on how curiosity and
interest are related to our learning process. This process-oriented approach is common in other
fields of psychology (e.g., cognitive psychology). Even in the literature of educational psy-
chology, a well-cited definition of motivation actually takes a process perspective. Specifically,
Pintrich and Schunk (2002) defined motivation as “the process whereby goal-directed activity
is instigated and sustained” (p. 5, emphasis added). Nevertheless, this process perspective has
not been incorporated well enough in the motivation research in educational psychology.
The proposed framework is also an attempt to incorporate the idea of curiosity and interest
into general reward-learning models (Dayan and Niv 2008; Sutton and Barto 1998). Currently,
research on curiosity and interest seems to be segregated across different fields including
educational psychology, with different terminologies and concepts used within the groups.
However, as the research on curiosity and interest becomes more and more interdisciplinary,
we believe it is important to provide common and unified ground that serves as the basis for
further cross-disciplinary discussion (Braver et al. 2014). For example, current research on
curiosity tends to focus on information-seeking behavior for knowledge that has only short-
term consequences (e.g., information about an outcome that would be revealed a few seconds
later; Bennett et al. 2016) or little practical value (e.g., trivia questions; Kang et al. 2009). This
approach, together with computational and neuroscientific methods, can provide a fine-grained
picture of the mechanisms of information-seeking behavior. But our proposed framework
indicates that this approach only provides a limited window into the whole knowledge-
acquisition process. On the other hand, empirical research on interest is abundant in the field
of educational psychology and prefers using realistic materials (e.g., text passages; Alexander
et al. 1995), which may be well suited to capture the development of the knowledge-
acquisition process. But realistic materials may make it difficult to examine knowledge
acquisition in a fine-grained manner. For example, one may find a relationship between the
amount of knowledge for a topic and perceived value for the topic, but with realistic materials
which typically do not have experimental control, it may be difficult to further examine the
psychological mechanisms about why and how the accumulation of knowledge promotes the
valuation of the topic. Future research should look for new research paradigms that achieve
granular investigation of the knowledge-acquisition process as well as its long-term
development.

Recommendation

Given that it is inherently difficult to provide a precise definition of curiosity and interest (as
they are naïve concepts), how should we use these terms in the research of educational
psychology and other fields? One obvious (but perhaps radical) option is to completely
eliminate the terms of curiosity and interest in scientific work and simply to specify which
Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895 889

aspect or component(s) of the knowledge-acquisition process are being referred to (e.g.,

“rewarding experience of knowledge acquisition,” “information prediction errors”). Indeed,
in the field of cognitive science, researchers prefer to using the term “information seeking”
rather than curiosity when describing curiosity-related phenomena (e.g., Gottlieb et al. 2013).
Alternatively, one potential compromise is to specify the aspects or components of the
knowledge-acquisition process whenever using these terms, rather than boldly using the terms
of “curiosity” and “interest” as they are. For example, one might refer to “the rewarding
experience of interest,” “information-seeking behavior in curiosity,” or “the self-rewarding
process in individual interest.” This way, researchers can avoid unnecessary confusion,
enabling smooth and efficient communication between researchers.

Implications for Measurements

In educational psychology, curiosity and interest have been commonly assessed using self-
report questionnaires (Renninger and Hidi 2011). This methodology provides us with a great
opportunity to examine the interrelationship between curiosity and interest but in light of our
framework, our biggest reservation is that it is extremely difficult to capture the recursive
process of knowledge acquisition with one-shot survey questions. Learning is a continuous
process. During a class, students’ knowledge is repeatedly updated, and students experience
numerous small feelings of reward, which fluctuate moment-by-moment. Even if a researcher
focuses on one specific component of the reward-learning process (e.g., the feeling of value),
one could only capture the aggregated view of experience, which is likely to be biased and
inaccurate. An experience sampling approach and within-person analysis may be a promising
methodology to capture the momentary nature of the knowledge-acquisition process (see also
Murayama et al. 2017a, for the advantage of this methodology), but this method still at most
provides only some snapshots of the process.
Nevertheless, we suggest that our framework would help researchers craft a set of items that
can better capture theoretical concepts of curiosity and interest. For example, situational
interest and individual interest represent a maturity of the knowledge-acquisition process as
a whole. By analyzing the distinct features of these two developmental phases for each step of
the knowledge-acquisition process, we may be able to provide a comprehensive set of items
that sufficiently cover the distinct features of situational interest and individual interest.
As indicated in our paper, there are a number of trait-level scales that aimed to understand
the individual differences in different aspects of curiosity and interest (Kashdan et al. 2009;
Litman 2008). These scales are typically validated using factor analysis but factor analysis is of
limited use to detect the items that are essential and important, as factor analysis simply makes
use of the correlational information to group the items. As correlation can be produced by
many miscellaneous confounding factors (e.g., similarities of the wording), it is difficult for
factor analysis to reveal the psychological process underlying a construct. As Whitely (1983)
argued, construct validity may be better established by focusing on psychological processes,
rather than focusing on the nomothetic network. Our reward-learning framework may provide
a useful theoretical guideline on which items should be deemed relevant or not.

Implications for Education

The value of reward in education has been controversial. In fact, while some educational
programs emphasize the value of reward systems (e.g., badges; see also Howard-Jones and Jay
890 Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895

2016; O’Byrne et al. 2015), some other researchers argue against any form of rewards or
incentive systems in education (e.g., Kohn 1993). An important phenomenon to discuss,
relating to the role of reward in education, is the undermining effect (Deci 1971). Specifically,
a number of studies have shown that removing extrinsic rewards for an enjoyable task
undermines people’s voluntary engagement in the task. Although this phenomenon is condi-
tional on several factors (e.g., the task needs to be interesting to participants; rewards should be
contingent on task performance), once the conditions are met, the undermining effect has been
robustly observed in the empirical literature (for a meta-analysis, see Deci et al. 1999).
Our proposed framework provides a potential middle-ground on this debate. As indicated in
our framework, once students are deeply engaged in an activity (i.e., students enjoy it), the
feedback-loop system generates internal rewards, making task engagement self-sustainable. At
this point, providing extrinsic rewards may shift students’ attention away from internal
rewards, potentially causing a breaking-up of the self-rewarding cycle (i.e., the undermining
effect). In fact, Murayama et al. (2010) showed that providing monetary rewards for an
intrinsically motivating activity dramatically decreases the reward network activation in the
brain (after the rewards are removed). On the other hand, when students are in the initial stage
of task engagement, in which students do not feel sufficient reward value to acquire knowl-
edge, extrinsic incentives or external supports to motivate information-seeking behavior
should help to “start-up” the system. In other words, effectiveness of extrinsic rewards or
external supports depends on the phase of students’ task engagement. Indeed, Ryan and Deci
(2000) suggested that, when people are not engaged in a task, satisfaction of the need for
competence and the need for relatedness (e.g., providing the means to increase their self-
confidence and perceived acceptance from others) should help them internalize the value,
realizing a more autonomous form of motivation. We believe certain forms of rewards and
social support should be useful to facilitate task engagement.6
It is important to note, however, that people generally overestimate the motivating power of
extrinsic rewards and underestimate people’s capacity to sustain task engagement. For exam-
ple, Murayama et al. (2017b) showed that people believe that extrinsic incentives are effective
even in situations where the undermining effect is likely to happen. This tendency was
observed even for participants who are currently in a position of teaching others. Murayama
et al. (2018) also showed that people underestimate how much they can sustain task engage-
ment for boring tasks. These studies indicate that our belief about motivation (known as
metamotivation; see Miele and Scholer 2018; Murayama et al. 2017b; Scholer et al. in press) is
often inaccurate. Such an inaccurate belief may lead schoolteachers to rely on extrinsic rewards
more often than necessary in educational practice, hampering the potential development of
interest. As discussed in the paper, we have an inherent (evolutionally developed) mechanism
to engage the knowledge-acquisition process without extrinsic rewards—this assumption
should be well recognized and shared by educators and teachers. To facilitate task engagement,
we should support students’ rewarding experience in a variety of ways (e.g., rewards, social
interaction) but once the wheels have started turning, appropriate adjustments should be made,
with slightly more belief in students’ capacity to self-sustain their task engagement.

6
Hidi and Renninger (2006) also noted that interest may influence the satisfaction of basic psychological needs.
This means that interest and the satisfaction of basic psychological needs may form a positive feedback loop to
sustain engagement. The relationship between basic psychological needs and reward-learning model is still an
important agenda for future inquiry (see Murayama, 2019a).
Educational Psychology Review (2019) 31:875–895 891

Acknowledgments We thank Memo Research Group for active discussion on the topic.

Funding Information This research was supported by the Marie Curie Career Integration Grant, Award
Number CIG630680 (to Kou Murayama); JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Numbers 15H05401; 18H01102 to Kou
Murayama, 16H06406 to Kou Murayama and Michiko Sakaki; 16H05959 and 16H02053 awarded to Michiko
Sakaki); F. J. McGuigan Early Career Investigator Prize from American Psychological Foundation (Kou
Murayama); and the Leverhulme Trust (Grant Numbers RPG-2016-146 and RL-2016-030 to Kou Murayama).

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and repro-
duction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a
link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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