The DOI matches its Crossref record; 13 of the 13 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Curiosity and reward: Valence predicts choice and information prediction errors enhance learning.
Open accessAbstract
Curiosity drives many of our daily pursuits and interactions; yet, we know surprisingly little about how it works. Here, we harness an idea implied in many conceptualizations of curiosity: that information has value in and of itself. Reframing curiosity as the motivation to obtain reward-where the reward is information-allows one to leverage major advances in theoretical and computational mechanisms of reward-motivated learning. We provide new evidence supporting 2 predictions that emerge from this framework. First, we find an asymmetric effect of positive versus negative information, with positive information enhancing both curiosity and long-term memory for information. Second, we find that it is not the absolute value of information that drives learning but, rather, the gap between the reward expected and reward received, an "information prediction error." These results support the idea that information functions as a reward, much like money or food, guiding choices and driving learning in systematic ways.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
A neural substrate of prediction and reward
Schultz, W., Dayan, P., & Montague, P. R. (1997) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.275.5306.1593 · Cited by 9,388
Schwarz, N., & Clore, G. L. (1983) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.45.3.513 · Cited by 4,952
The psychology of curiosity: A review and reinterpretation.
Loewenstein, G. (1994) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.116.1.75 · Cited by 2,738 · cited 3×
“Building on these ideas, Loewenstein (1994) posited an information gap theory of curiosity, suggesting that curiosity is the result of a perceived gap between what one knows and what one wants to know.”
BackgroundInfluentialPOSNER, J., RUSSELL, J. A., & PETERSON, B. S. (2005) · Development and Psychopathology · doi:10.1017/s0954579405050340 · Cited by 2,602
Cognitive neuroscience of emotional memory
LaBar, K. S., & Cabeza, R. (2006) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn1825 · Cited by 1,834 · cited 1×
“And they generally remember morevalenced, as opposed to neutral, information (for a review, see LaBar & Cabeza, 2006).”
BackgroundThe neural basis of loss aversion in decision-making under risk
Tom, S. M., Fox, C. R., Trepel, C., & Poldrack, R. A. (2007) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1134239 · Cited by 1,733
Behavioral Theories and the Neurophysiology of Reward
Schultz, W. (2006) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.56.091103.070229 · Cited by 1,637
Communication and Uncertainty Management
Brashers, D. E. (2001) · Journal of Communication · doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2001.tb02892.x · Cited by 1,407
Griffin, R. J., Dunwoody, S., & Neuwirth, K. (1999) · Environmental Research · doi:10.1006/enrs.1998.3940 · Cited by 1,187
Reward-motivated learning: mesolimbic activation precedes memory formation
Adcock, R. A., Thangavel, A., Whitfield-Gabrieli, S., Knutson, B., & Gabrieli, J. D. E. (2006) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2006.03.036 · Cited by 977
Cited by
Towards a neuroscience of active sampling and curiosity
Gottlieb, J., & Oudeyer, P.-Y. (2018) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/s41583-018-0078-0 · Cited by 494
A neural network for information seeking
White, J. K., Bromberg-Martin, E. S., Heilbronner, S. R., Zhang, K., Pai, J., Haber, S. N., & Monosov, I. E. (2019) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-019-13135-z · Cited by 129
Neural circuitry of information seeking
Bromberg-Martin, E. S., & Monosov, I. E. (2020) · Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.07.006 · Cited by 89
Interest: A unique affective and cognitive motivational variable that develops
(2022) · Advances in Motivation Science · doi:10.1016/bs.adms.2021.12.004 · Cited by 81
Lighting the wick in the candle of learning: generating a prediction stimulates curiosity
Brod, G., & Breitwieser, J. (2019) · npj Science of Learning · doi:10.1038/s41539-019-0056-y · Cited by 60
Metadata
- Authors
- Marvin, C. B., & Shohamy, D.
- Venue
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
- Published
- 2016-03
- Volume
- 145
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 266-272
- ISSN
- 0096-3445 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-2222
- OpenAlex
- W2433308118
- Cited by
- 264
- References
- 13
- FWCI
- 23.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Curiosity and reward: Valence predicts choice and information prediction errors enhance learning. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037/xge0000140
- The paper
- Marvin, C. B., & Shohamy, D. (2016). Curiosity and reward: Valence predicts choice and information prediction errors enhance learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000140
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.