Situational Interest and Epistemic Curiosity: Identical Twins or Distant Cousins?

• In Event: 66.051 - Curiosity and Interest: Clarifying the Relationship

Abstract

Most researchers consider the domains of interest and curiosity in the context of education as largely unrelated. Attempts to link these psychological constructs are virtually absent in the literature (Ainley, Hidi, & Berndorff, 2002; Berlyne, 1962). It is the present authors’ position however, that although there may be differences in definitions between situational interest and epistemic curiosity, the psychological mechanism underlying both constructs is in fact identical. It is likely that both situational interest and epistemic curiosity are aroused by the perception of being deprived of knowledge regarding a specific topic at hand (Rotgans & Schmidt, 2014).

The challenge we face to empirically test this proposal is that currently no direct comparison between situational interest and curiosity is possible. The reasons for this are twofold: (1) There are different ways in which situational interest is operationalized (Renninger & Hidi, 2011); and (2) Historically, epistemic curiosity is only measured as a semi-permanent attribute of people (Loewenstein, 1994). A situational measure of epistemic curiosity would be needed to test hypotheses on its relationship with situational interest.

In our contribution we describe a first attempt to develop a situational measure of epistemic curiosity and an exploration of its relationship with situational interest. To that end, we have translated an existing and relatively much used epistemic curiosity scale into a situational equivalent. (Translating existing rating scales into an appropriate situational equivalent in itself poses many theoretical and empirical challenges because most items typically tend to take a long-term—as opposed to a situational—perspective and assume that epistemic curiosity is essentially an attribute of a person, stable over time, rather than a state that is aroused by situational influences.)
A situational interest measure and the new situational epistemic curiosity measure were administered in conjunction, using a previously developed micro-analytical measurement approach (Rotgans & Schmidt, 2011, 2014). Micro-analytical measurement involves the repeated administration of short questionnaires over the course of a learning event. It provides a window on changes over time as a result of the instructional intervention in the variables of interest. We have already demonstrated that, when presented with a problem (constructed by a teacher for instructional purposes) situational interest is significantly aroused. When students subsequently process a text about the problem, situational interest decreases (Rotgans & Schmidt, 2011, 2014), lending support to the knowledge deprivation account of its emergence. In our more recent work, we asked secondary school students to offer a tentative explanation for a science problem presented to them and subsequently gave them a text providing information about the physics mechanism responsible for the problem. We measured situational interest and situational epistemic curiosity in conjunction both before and after the problem was presented, and after the text was studied. The relation between the two measures is used to explain how, in our view, curiosity and situational interest are related.

Authors

• Henk G. Schmidt, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Jerome I. Rotgans, Nanyang Technological University