par Di Stasi, Romain ;Kabdebon, Claire;Delhaye, Quentin ;De Heering, Adélaïde
Référence 2025 Annual Meeting of the Belgian Association for Psychological Sciences
Publication Publié, 2025-05-26
Poster de conférence
Résumé : Curiosity is a fundamental driver of learning (Oudeyer et al., 2016), yet its development and mechanisms remain poorly understood. Among the identified mechanisms, some studies indicate that curiosity is stimulated by information that is neither too certain nor too uncertain (Oudeyer et al., 2016). This optimal (un)certainty balance maximizes the reward-to-cost ratio of information-seeking by ensuring that information is challenging enough to be engaging yet comprehensible. This, in turn, triggers curiosity, which drives individuals to seek information (Oudeyer et al., 2016). Similarly, Kidd et al. (2012, 2014) showed that 8-month-old infants exhibit increased curiosity—measured by their attention to stimuli—toward information that is neither too certain nor too uncertain, a phenomenon they call the Goldilocks effect. However, this effect has never been studied across ages or in non-human primates. To bridge this gap, we will compare both groups in a task where an experimenter sequentially presses the top button of a demonstration cube eight times, triggering a specific sequence of sounds. The cube will then be handed back to the subject, now silent. This procedure will be repeated with four additional cubes, each emitting sounds with varying probabilities (0, 1, 4, or 8 out of 8 button presses) to manipulate uncertainty. Infants' and primates' exploratory (e.g., pressing different buttons, manipulating objects) and exploitation behaviors (e.g., repeatedly pressing the same button) will be assessed for each condition and compared across species. This study thus offers new insights into the universality and mechanisms of curiosity, bridging developmental and comparative perspectives.

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