Curiosity-driven learning in adults with and without dyslexia

Abstract

People are willing to spend time and money to receive information and content they are curious about, such as answers to trivia questions, suggesting they find information rewarding. In neurotypical adults, states of high curiosity satisfaction are also known to enhance the learning and memory of information encountered in that state. Here, we investigated whether the relationship between curiosity, satisfaction, and learning was altered in a group with specific learning difficulty (dyslexia). Using a willingness-to-wait paradigm, we observed that adults with and without dyslexia are willing to spend time waiting for verbal and visual information. This indicates that the same "wanting" mechanisms are seen in individuals with dyslexia for information. We then examined whether information that was desirable was also associated with enhanced memory. Our findings indicate that information does function like a reward, with the gap between expected and received information driving memory. However, this memory effect was attenuated in individuals with dyslexia. These findings point to the need to understand how reward drives learning and why this relationship might differ in dyslexia.

Keywords: Curiosity; dyslexia; trivia; vocabulary.

Figure 1.

Experimental paradigm. Panel (a) shows the willingness-to-wait task, where participants were shown a question and three possible choices. If participants chose “Wait,” they waited for the amount of time displayed alongside the trial and were then shown the answer. They then rated their satisfaction with the answer. If they chose “Skip” or “Know,” they advanced to the next trial after a brief pause of 500 ms. Panel (b) shows the curiosity task participants completed after the willingness-to-wait task. Participants rated all the questions they encountered using a 7-point scale (1—Not curious at all, 7—Very Curious). Panel (c) shows example trials from the memory task that participants completed on the next day (one visual and one verbal question are shown). Participants were given an “I don’t know” option, in addition to the correct answer, and two closely related semantic lures.

Figure 2.

Participants were more likely to wait for an answer when (a) they expressed greater curiosity, or (b) they encountered a longer delay time. (c) All participants were more likely to wait when they were curious about visual information (illustrated in orange, this relationship was attenuated for verbal information (illustrated in blue)). (d) Relative to controls, participants with dyslexia were more likely to wait for visual information they were curious about (illustrated in orange)). Both groups showed a similar relationship between curiosity and waiting times in the case of verbal information (illustrated in blue). (e) Participants with dyslexia were less likely to wait for verbal information (illustrated in blue) that was associated with longer wait times, relative to visual information (illustrated in orange). In all plots, solid lines indicate the influence of the factor on the probability of deciding to make a “wait” decision. Lines are scaled by response. The bands around the solid lines indicate the 95% confidence interval. The black lines on the x-axis visually indicate the number of observations at each level of the factor.

Figure 3.

Participants were more likely to remember information when they (a) expressed greater curiosity, or (b) had positive information prediction errors or IPEs. (c) Participants with dyslexia were less likely to remember items than controls. (d) The relationship between curiosity and memory was stronger for visual items (illustrated in orange), relative to verbal items (illustrated in blue). This relationship is plotted pooling over those with dyslexia and those without, as the three-way interaction was not significant. (e) Adults without dyslexia were more likely to remember information when they had a positive information prediction error, that is, when they found the answer more satisfying than their rated curiosity. Adults with dyslexia showed a significant but weaker relationship between IPE and memory. In all plots, solid thick lines indicate the influence of the factor on the probability of remembering items. The coloured bands around the solid lines, or the error bars in plot C, indicate the 95% confidence interval. The black lines on the x-axis indicate the number of items per level of the factor.