Visual affects: Linking curiosity, Aha-Erlebnis, and memory through information gain

Current theories in curiosity research propose that our sense of is determined by the learning progress, or information gain, cognitive system expects to make. However, few studies have explicitly tried quantify subjective gain and link it measures curiosity. Here, we asked people report their about intrinsically engaging perceptual ‘puzzles’ known as Mooney images, strength aha experience upon revealing solution image (curiosity relief). We also participants (N = 279) make a guess concerning image, used distribution these guesses compute crowdsourced semantic entropy (or ambiguity) measure potential for gain. did this computing Shannon probability different across total number guesses. For example, an with many labels will high entropy, while same label all would low entropy. Our results confirm substantially associated (r 0.38, p < .001) and, even more so, .55, .001). These findings support expected theory suggest experience, intrinsic reward, driven actual In unannounced memory task after main experiment, established often reported influence on fully mediated relief (B .01, implications burgeoning fields psychoaesthetics.