Temporal proximity to the elicitation of curiosity is key for enhancing memory for incidental information

Abstract

Curiosity states benefit memory for curiosity target information, but also incidental information presented during curiosity states. Curiosity-related activity in dopaminergic regions and the hippocampus predicts such curiosity-enhanced memory for incidental information. However, it is not known whether incidental curiosity-enhanced memory depends on when incidental information during curiosity states is encountered. Here, participants incidentally encoded unrelated face images at different time points while they anticipated answers to trivia questions. Across two experiments, we found memory enhancements for unrelated faces presented during high- compared to low-curiosity states, but only when a face was presented shortly after a trivia question. This incidental curiosity-enhanced memory was independent of the type of encoding judgement and was evident both after a short (Experiment 1) and a 24-hour delay (Experiment 2). The findings suggest that processes associated with the elicitation of curiosity - but not processes preceding the satisfaction of curiosity - enhance memory for incidental information.

Anticipation of novel environments enhances memory for incidental information

“…recollection for incidental objects in proximity to the pathway starting point when the anticipation of novelty was elicited. Furthermore, our results are consistent with recent findings from our laboratory showing that incidental memory (for face images) was improved under high-curiosity compared with low-curiosity states only during an early phase of the anticipation period (Murphy et al 2021). Therefore, our findings on the relationship between novelty anticipation and incidental memory together with reward-and curiosity-related effects on incidental memory suggest that potentially dopaminergic and hippocampal recruitment boost memory for incidental information that is in temporal proximity to the elicitation of dopaminergic activity.…”

“…Furthermore, the present findings contribute to the nascent literature of how curiosity impacts learning and memory. Prior studies on curiosity-related memory enhancements of incidental, unrelated material used (1) primarily trivia questions to elicit various levels of curiosity and (2) neutral face images as incidental material (Gruber et al 2014;Galli et al 2018;Stare et al 2018;Fandakova and Gruber 2021;Murphy et al 2021). Our findings that the overall level of curiosity (i.e., interindividual difference in curiosity) about novel rooms (instead of trivia answers) correlated with memory for incidental daily life objects (instead of faces) are in line with previous findings using the trivia paradigm on curiosity-related memory enhancements and the general notion of the positive effects of curiosity on learning and memory .…”

“…Recollection performance was examined by response accuracy, which was calculated as the corrected hit rate for old objects (i.e., proportion of correct "remembered" responses for old objectsproportion of incorrect "remembered" responses for new objects). Here we focused on recollection performance because it is thought to be dependent on the hippocampus (Yonelinas 2002), and given theoretical models and findings on reward, novelty and curiosity, recollection would be expected to show the strongest effects related to novelty and curiosity (Lisman and Grace 2005;Wittmann et al 2007;Düzel et al 2010;Shohamy and Adcock 2010;Gruber et al 2016;Murphy et al 2021). Data analysis details are included in the Supplemental Material.…”

The interaction of curiosity and reward on long-term memory in younger and older adults

“…To account for the clustered data structure of trials within participants and the dichotomous nature of the dependent variables (trial-level recognition and recall outcomes), logistic mixed effects models were estimated for both dependent variables. All statistical analyses were carried out in R version 1.3.959 (R Core Team, 2020). Mixed models were estimated using the glmr function of the lme4 package (Bates et al, 2015); p values for model coefficients were estimated using the lmerTest package (Kuznetsova et al, 2017); and fixed effects and interactions were tested using the Anova function from the car package (Fox & Weisberg, 2019) and are reported as Wald chi-square tests.…”

“…If incidental face memory depends more on curiosity satisfaction (Marvin & Shohamy, 2016), surprise (Baranes et al, 2015), or post-answer interest (McGillivray et al, 2015) than on the anticipation associated with curiosity, then this disruption may have disrupted the effect. However, recent work suggests that incidental memory enhancement from curiosity is contingent on proximity to curiosity elicitation rather than curiosity satisfaction (Murphy et al, 2020). If curiosity elicitation is the critical component process, the obstruction should not have influenced curiosity-enhanced memory for incidental faces.…”