Abstract. Human spoken language uses a continuous stream of acoustic signals to communicate about continuous features of the world, by using discrete forms

How top-down connections are shaped by hierarchical inference is explained through developing a deep-generative model. V2-like texture representation is shown to emerge through natural experiences, wh...

Graduate Students (PhD program) I will be accepting PhD students through the NYU psychology department for the current application cycle (for admission in Fall 2026). My lab is joint between the Co...

AbstractMany empirical studies have found a curvilinear (inverted-U) relationship between knowledge and curiosity, such that curiosity is induced when stimuli are neither unknown nor too familiar. While various theoretical accounts have been proposed to explain this phenomenon, no clear link between them have been delineated. In this Perspective, we review seven psychological accounts of the inverted-U relationship between knowledge and curiosity (“the U”) and provide a coherent framework integrating them. According to this framework, the U emerges as a consequence of the imperative to pursue learning progress and thus maximize knowledge. We show that some theories of curiosity address this issue by explicitly stipulating knowledge maximization as the computational objective, and learning-progress maximization as an optimal means of achieving it (i.e., normative theories). Other theories focus on psychological mechanisms or factors that drive curiosity (i.e., process theories). We propose that these process-theoretic mechanisms could also work in a manner that maximizes learning by signaling situations in which some relevant prior knowledge exists, but is incomplete. The implications of this framework for future theoretical work on curiosity and its connections to related phenomena are discussed.

The selective revision of beliefs in light of new evidence has been considered one of the hallmarks of human-level rationality. However, tests of this ability in other species are lacking. We examined...