ArticleCommunications psychology2024
Curiosity shapes spatial exploration and cognitive map formation in humans.
Article in Communications psychology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Survey of the intersection of mental maps and visualization.Visual computing for industry, biomedicine, and art · 2026Review
- Article
- Immersive gratifications and compulsive VR media engagement: a dual-process model of erotic content consumption in virtual reality.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- "Freely explore this environment": individual differences in exploration behavior and survey knowledge.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2025Article
- The necessity of motoric engagement in enhancing route memory.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Cognitive maps are thought to arise, at least in part, from our intrinsic curiosity to explore unknown places. However, it remains untested how curiosity shapes aspects of spatial exploration in humans. Combining a virtual reality task with indices of exploration complexity, we found that pre-exploration curiosity states predicted how much individuals spatially explored environments, whereas markers of visual exploration determined post-exploration feelings of interest. Moreover, individual differences in curiosity traits, particularly Stress Tolerance, modulated the relationship between curiosity and spatial exploration, suggesting the capacity to cope with uncertainty enhances the curiosity-exploration link. Furthermore, both curiosity and spatial exploration predicted how precisely participants could recall spatial-relational details of the environment, as measured by a sketch map task. These results provide new evidence for a link between curiosity and exploratory behaviour, and how curiosity might shape cognitive map formation.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.