What we think we know, but might not, pushes us to learn more
news.berkeley.edu
news.berkeley.edu
>Recent work has argued that curiosity can improve learning. However, these studies also leave open the possibility that being on the verge of knowing can itself induce curiosity. We investigate how prior knowledge relates to curiosity and subsequent learning using a trivia question task. Curiosity in our task is best predicted by a learner’s estimate of their current knowledge, more so than an objective measure of what they actually know. Learning is best predicted by both curiosity and an objective measure of knowledge. These results suggest that while curiosity is correlated with knowledge, there is only a small boost in learning from being curious. The implication is that the mechanisms that drive curiosity are not identical to those that drive learning outcomes.
For adults, I expect this still requires a neutral ground context before it can work. It’s easy to find arguments where people fiercely believe untrue things because the conversation starts in a judgemental and hostile place.
Personally, I love reflecting on the fact that there are very few things I can actually say I “know” for absolutely certain, in the sense that I have verified it myself, not in the sense that I learned it or read it or have a strong belief. The number of things I’m quite certain about vastly vastly outnumber the things I can say I know for sure. I think it does help me stay curious, but mostly when I’m free to ponder and explore, not when I’m in the middle of a heated debate.
So let's take a look at what we can about this experiment:
1) A sample size of 87: Okay, better than many studies, but I still have my doubts about the statistical power for this study.
2) The adults used for this study were recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk: Okay, already we have a selection bias. At this pointed I'm strongly tempted to read no further.
3) I can't get any more details about the experiment itself since I don't want to pay $US40 to access the PDF.
> We recruited 114 participants on Amazon Mechanical Turk based on the expected effect size for curiosity on trivia questions (as estimated via Kang et al., 2009 and Gruber et al., 2014) and how many participants we estimated we would need to exclude (e.g., due to inattention) based on previous laboratory experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk. From this sample, we excluded 16 participants for providing the same curiosity rating on at least 90% of trials in the learning phase, and 11 for skipping 20% or more of trials.1 We included the resulting 87 participants in the analyses reported below. Participants received a monetary payment at a rate of US$10.00 hourly in exchange for their participation, and the task lasted approximately 50 min.
Take from it what you will, but I feel the title should be changed to "What curious attentive Amazon Mechanical Turk users whose curiosity rating tends to increase, who don't skip tasks, who need to earn some money, and who have 50 minutes to spare think they know--but might not--pushes them to learn more..." But I jest...