Topic: Psychology of Curiosity

Curiosity is fundamental to the human experience: it's what makes us ask questions, Google things, experiment, and explore. The goal of this course is to introduce students to research on curiosity through the lens of cognitive science. We will consider questions like: What kinds of situations make people curious? How does curiosity manifest in the brain? Are children more curious than adults? Is curiosity present in non-human animals? How does curiosity shape decision making, memory, and learning? Through reading, writing, and discussion, students will learn about these topics and deepen their understanding of empirical research in psychology.

Dr. Emily Liquin will be joining the psychology department in the fall of 2024.
Research Interests

• Cognition
• Child development
• Learning
• Curiosity
• Question asking

Her research investigates how humans learn and discover new things, with a particular focus on curiosity, exploration, and question asking. For example, her recent work has asked: How are curiosity, exploration, and question asking shaped by a person’s prior knowledge, experience, and context? And how does information-seeking behavior change between childhood and adulthood? Dr. Liquin takes an interdisciplinary approach to answering these questions, incorporating perspectives and methods from cognitive, developmental, and social psychology, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. Her ultimate goal is to gain a comprehensive understanding of how humans play an active role in their own learning—with the potential to inform interventions to improve learning in everyday settings.  Lab Website:  liquinlab.github.io