Metcalfe Janet, Schwartz Bennett L, Bloom Paul A
Columbia University, New York, NY USA.
Florida International University, Miami, FL USA.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2017;2(1):31. doi: 10.1186/s41235-017-0065-4. Epub 2017 Jul 18.
Theories of study time allocation and of curiosity suggest that people are most engaged with and want to devote their time to materials that are not completely mastered but also are not so difficult that they might be impossible. Their curiosity is thought to be triggered by items that are almost known, or are in what is sometimes called the region of proximal learning. Answers that are on the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT)-not immediately recallable but nevertheless evoking a feeling of imminent recall-seem, intuitively, to be materials that have this characteristic of being almost, but not quite, fully known. We therefore, hypothesized that people would be particularly curious to see the answers to questions for which the answers were on the tips of their tongues. To test the TOT curiosity hypothesis, we gave participants 82 general information questions and quickly asked whether the answers were or were not on the tips of their tongues and whether they wanted to see the answers later. Overwhelmingly, items that were accompanied by a TOT feeling were those which evoked participants' curiosity, regardless of whether the feeling occurred in conjunction with an error of commission, an error of omission, or even with the correct answer.
学习时间分配理论和好奇心理论表明，人们最投入并愿意将时间花在那些尚未完全掌握但也并非难到无法理解的材料上。人们的好奇心被认为是由那些几乎知晓的内容，或者处于有时被称为“近端学习区域”的内容所触发。那些处于舌尖效应（TOT）——无法立即回忆起来但却引发即将回忆起来的感觉——的答案，直观上似乎就是具有这种几乎知晓但又不完全知晓特征的材料。因此，我们假设人们会特别好奇去查看那些答案处于舌尖效应的问题的答案。为了检验舌尖效应好奇心假设，我们给参与者82个常识性问题，并迅速询问他们答案是否处于舌尖效应，以及他们之后是否想看答案。绝大多数情况下，伴有舌尖效应感觉的题目正是那些引发参与者好奇心的题目，无论这种感觉是与肯定性错误、否定性错误，甚至是正确答案同时出现。
