Curiosity: From Psychology to Computation

Literature in psychology has shown that curiosity is the intrinsic motivation for exploration, learning, and creativity. Various forms of computational curiosity have been developed to provide artificial beings with desirable functions, such as detecting and adapting to novel inputs, making decisions related to aesthetics, and achieving pedagogical purposes. This article reviews existing models of computational curiosity in light of psychological theories that are beneficial to building models of human cognition and designing human-like agents. We first study theories in psychology to shed light on the underpinnings of human curiosity, where a two-step process is proposed to serve as a general model for analyzing curiosity. Subsequently, existing models of computational curiosity are reviewed under the proposed framework. We conclude the review by identifying 4 key research issues in computational curiosity and 10 important research areas where computational curiosity could bring significant impact.