Emily G Liquin
Biographic Data
| ID | 9496406 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Emily G Liquin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Emily G |
| FAMILY NAME | Liquin |
| SIGNATURE | LIQUIN E G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Princeton University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7414-5603 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
More Time and Effort, Same Curiosity
Why do people feel curious about some questions but not others? Recent accounts of curiosity argue that curiosity should be highest when learning is likely to occur and likely to be rapid. However, it is less clear whether practical barriers to learning—for example, the effort required to gain information—matter for how curious we feel. In three preregistered experiments with a total of 419 participants, we test whether the expected degree of eff…
Seeking New Information With Old Questions
Question asking is a key tool for learning about the world, especially in childhood. However, formulating good questions is challenging. In any given situation, many questions are possible but only few are informative. In the present work, we investigate two ways 5- to 10-year-olds and adults simplify the challenge of formulating questions: by reusing previous questions, and by recombining components of previous questions to form new questions. I…
Minimally counterintuitive stimuli trigger greater curiosity than merely improbable stimuli
Motivated to learn
Many explanations have a distinctive, positive phenomenology: receiving or generating these explanations feels satisfying. Accordingly, we might expect this feeling of explanatory satisfaction to reinforce and motivate inquiry. Across five studies, we investigate how explanatory satisfaction plays this role: by motivating and reinforcing inquiry quite generally ("brute motivation" account), or by selectively guiding inquiry to support useful lear…
The development of creative search strategies
How does creativity develop? Creativity is a multi-faceted behavior and thus it is difficult to find measures for creativity that are both precise and comparable across development. Here, we examine the development of creativity using a "creative foraging" task. The task measures different facets of creativity which we compare between 4- to 8-year-old children and adults. We find that compared to adults, children spend a higher percentage of thei…
Children are more exploratory and learn more than adults in an approach-avoid task
Intuitively, children appear to be more exploratory than adults, and this exploration seems to help children learn,. However, there have been few clear tests of these ideas. We test whether exploration and learning change across development using a task that presents a "learning trap." In this task, exploitation-maximizing immediate reward and avoiding costs-may lead the learner to draw incorrect conclusions, while exploration may lead to better …
A functional approach to explanation-seeking curiosity
Why do some (and only some) observations prompt people to ask "why?" We propose a functional approach to "Explanation-Seeking Curiosity" (ESC): the state that motivates people to seek an explanation. If ESC tends to prompt explanation search when doing so is likely to be beneficial, we can use prior work on the functional consequences of explanation search to derive "forward-looking" candidate triggers of ESC-those that concern expectations about…
Science demands explanation, religion tolerates mystery
Some claims (e.g., that the Earth goes around the Sun) seem to call out for explanation: they make us wonder "why?". For other claims (e.g., that God exists), one might accept that the explanation is a mystery. In the present research, we investigate "need for explanation" and "mystery acceptability" across the domains of science and religion, as a window onto differences between scientific and religious cognition more broadly. In Study 1, we fin…
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A functional approach to explanation-seeking curiosity
Why do some (and only some) observations prompt people to ask "why?" We propose a functional approach to "Explanation-Seeking Curiosity" (ESC): the state that motivates people to seek an explanation. If ESC tends to prompt explanation search when doing so is likely to be beneficial, we can use prior work on the functional consequences of explanation search to derive "forward-looking" candidate triggers of ESC-those that concern expectations about…
Science demands explanation, religion tolerates mystery
Some claims (e.g., that the Earth goes around the Sun) seem to call out for explanation: they make us wonder "why?". For other claims (e.g., that God exists), one might accept that the explanation is a mystery. In the present research, we investigate "need for explanation" and "mystery acceptability" across the domains of science and religion, as a window onto differences between scientific and religious cognition more broadly. In Study 1, we fin…
Motivated to learn
Many explanations have a distinctive, positive phenomenology: receiving or generating these explanations feels satisfying. Accordingly, we might expect this feeling of explanatory satisfaction to reinforce and motivate inquiry. Across five studies, we investigate how explanatory satisfaction plays this role: by motivating and reinforcing inquiry quite generally ("brute motivation" account), or by selectively guiding inquiry to support useful lear…
The development of creative search strategies
How does creativity develop? Creativity is a multi-faceted behavior and thus it is difficult to find measures for creativity that are both precise and comparable across development. Here, we examine the development of creativity using a "creative foraging" task. The task measures different facets of creativity which we compare between 4- to 8-year-old children and adults. We find that compared to adults, children spend a higher percentage of thei…
Children are more exploratory and learn more than adults in an approach-avoid task
Intuitively, children appear to be more exploratory than adults, and this exploration seems to help children learn,. However, there have been few clear tests of these ideas. We test whether exploration and learning change across development using a task that presents a "learning trap." In this task, exploitation-maximizing immediate reward and avoiding costs-may lead the learner to draw incorrect conclusions, while exploration may lead to better …
Minimally counterintuitive stimuli trigger greater curiosity than merely improbable stimuli
Seeking New Information With Old Questions
Question asking is a key tool for learning about the world, especially in childhood. However, formulating good questions is challenging. In any given situation, many questions are possible but only few are informative. In the present work, we investigate two ways 5- to 10-year-olds and adults simplify the challenge of formulating questions: by reusing previous questions, and by recombining components of previous questions to form new questions. I…
More Time and Effort, Same Curiosity
Why do people feel curious about some questions but not others? Recent accounts of curiosity argue that curiosity should be highest when learning is likely to occur and likely to be rapid. However, it is less clear whether practical barriers to learning—for example, the effort required to gain information—matter for how curious we feel. In three preregistered experiments with a total of 419 participants, we test whether the expected degree of eff…
Psychology (7 works) · Psychological and Educational Research Studies (5 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (4 works) · Cognitive psychology (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · Curiosity (3 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (3 works) · Computer Science (2 works) · Misinformation and Its Impacts (2 works)