Learners are more likely to remember what they study if they are motivated to do so. Such motivation can be externally driven by prospective rewards, but also intrinsically driven by curiosity. The present research focused on the role of curiosity during intentional learning. We examined the potential mnemonic benefit of curiosity, whether this benefit is undermined when learners are externally motivated to learn by rewards, and whether it can be attributed to increased study time for information they are more curious about. In two experiments, participants were presented with trivia questions, rated their level of curiosity about each question, and then studied the answers, either with or without a prospect of reward for correct recall on a subsequent test. Study time was either fixed (Experiment 1) or self-paced (Experiment 2). Performance on a memory test 1 week later suggested that curiosity enhanced long-term retention, and that rewards did not undermine the benefit of curiosity. When learning was self-paced, study time increased with curiosity but did not account for the effect of curiosity on memory. The results highlight the important role curiosity plays in learning and suggest that curiosity and rewards can be used together effectively to promote students' learning.

中文翻译：

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学习动机。

如果有动力，学习者会更容易记住他们所学的内容。这种动机可以由预期奖励从外部驱动，也可以由好奇心内部驱动。目前的研究集中在好奇心在意向学习中的作用。我们研究了好奇心的潜在助记符好处，当学习者受到外部激励以通过奖励学习时，这种好处是否会被削弱，以及是否可以将其归因于学习时间的增加，以获取他们更好奇的信息。在两个实验中，向参与者展示琐事问题，评估他们对每个问题的好奇心程度，然后研究答案，无论是否希望在随后的测试中正确回忆，都可以得到奖励。学习时间是固定的（实验1）或自定进度（实验2）。1周后进行的记忆力测试表明，好奇心增强了长期保留能力，而奖励并没有损害好奇心的好处。自定进度学习时，学习时间会随着好奇心而增加，但并不能说明好奇心对记忆的影响。研究结果凸显了好奇心在学习中的重要作用，并表明好奇心和奖励可以有效地一起用于促进学生的学习。