Choose to be Curious, Uncategorized

Images of Curiosity: Visual & Domain-Specific

Posted on by Lynn Borton in Choose to be Curious, Uncategorized

“The way that we think about knowledge–what we refer to as epistemic beliefs–have really predictable shifts. And I think those have a really important interaction with what we could possibly be curious about.” ~ Emily Grossnickle Peterson

Can we capture what makes us curious? Where does our curiosity cross into confusion, or frustration? Can we place it? Might we experience it in one domain, but not another?

These are the kinds of questions that animate the work of Emily Grossnickle Peterson, Ph.D., director of the Educational Neuroscience Lab at American University.

Years after first meeting, we finally sat down to talk…

If it gets too uncomfortable, do we stop calling it “curiosity” and do we call it something else?

LISTEN TO CHOOSE TO BE CURIOUS #236: IMAGES OF CURIOSITY: VISUAL & DOMAIN-SPECIFIC, WITH EMILY PETERSON

There are so many options for recommending how to build on this conversation, but I’m going to go with guests who were also part of an American University Humanities Lab workgroup on curiosity in which both Emily and I participated. 

Check out these C2BC classics with other workgroup participants:

Check out Dr. Emily Peterson’s Educational Neuroscience Lab. 

Add your pictures to the Images of Curiosity project on SciStarter. 

Listen to my conversation with Caroline Nickerson, citizen-science and SciStarter advisor.

Theme music by Sean Balick; “A Burst of Light” by Delray, via Blue Dot Sessions.

You can subscribe to Choose to Be Curious on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

CHOOSE TO BE CURIOUS SHOP IS UNDER (RE)CONSTRUCTION. Back soon!

IMAGES OF CURIOSITY: VISUAL & DOMAIN-SPECIFIC, WITH EMILY PETERSON

Emily Peterson: Something else I think is really interesting is the way that we think about knowledge. So, do we think if it’s something that’s acquired really quickly? Does it come from experts? Or is it something that I construct for myself and might have really these nuances and subjectivity and I need to weigh evidence or I can create knowledge by doing science experiments? The way that we think about knowledge, these what we refer to as epistemic beliefs, have really predictable shifts. And I think those have a really important interaction with what we could possibly be curious about.

(theme music)

Lynn Borton: This is Choose to be Curious, a show all about curiosity. We talk about research and theory, but mostly it’s conversations about how curiosity shows up in work. 

I’m your host, Lynn Borton. Welcome! Come, choose to be curious with us… 

I don’t often get to be a research guinea pig, but that’s what happened when I paid a visit to Emily Grossnickle Peterson’s Educational Neuroscience Lab at American University [00:01:00] recently.

I was meeting with Emily in anticipation of this conversation and to visit with the graduate and undergraduate students involved in the lab’s research. They put me right to work, trying out the study interface they were developing for a National Science Foundation grant investigating curiosity-driven visual processing during science learning.

Did you know that snails smell through their tentacles? I did not know that, but I learned it, and I’ve discovered I was actually curious about this fact when they sat me down for this trial run through. I won’t spoil the surprise, you know, in case you happen to participate in this research. I’ll just say that I thoroughly enjoyed my peek behind the research curtain, and I’m definitely curious to hear what they learn.

Dr. Peterson is a professor in the School of Education and an affiliate faculty member in the Psychology Department [00:02:00] and in the Behavior, Cognition, and Neuroscience PhD program at American University. Among other things, she studies intrinsic motivations, such as curiosity and interest, that are critical for sustained inquiry in science and mathematics.

At the heart of her lab’s work is a desire to reduce disparities among people typically underrepresented in STEM fields –so science, technology, engineering, mathematics — by conducting research that contributes to a deeper understanding of how students engage with science and math. She thinks about things like, What neurological and psychological changes take place when students are curious? How does curiosity develop? Why are some individuals more curious than others?

One of my favorite among her many current efforts is a citizen science project. You might [00:03:00]remember my conversation with the folks at SciStarter. This is one of those easy ways for anyone to play a real role in scientific research.

(Listen to that conversation if you want on my website.) 

The project is called Images of Curiosity, and the goal is to collect photos that have sparked curiosity, photos that will eventually find use in education research. 

To participate, you and I look for things that pique our curiosity. We take photos, and we submit the pictures.

That’s it. 

We can do it from anywhere, about anything. 

You can find the Images of Curiosity study on SciStarter, or on my website. I warn you, it can get a little addicting. 

I am delighted to have Emily Grossnickel Peterson join me today. So welcome, Emily.

EP: Thank you, Lynn. I’m delighted to be here.

LB: Oh, it’s really delightful to have you. And thanks for the opportunity to meet with your students and see how the [00:04:00] sausage was made. That was really a special time for me.

EP: Yeah, we’re always happy to have people test out and try out our studies. It’s interesting because I think you were coming to it as a very curious person, and so we’re often trying to get both curious and less curious people to participate as guinea pigs in our studies because they provide often very different perspectives.

LB: Yeah. As we were sitting down to get started on this, we were both reacting, Oh, there’s just so much to talk about, but I want to, I actually want to start with the images of curiosity because I think in some ways that’s like the most accessible thing that you’re doing. 

It’s… first of all, it’s citizen science…It’s about other people proactively going and identifying their own curiosity. But talk to me about the goal. What are you hoping to learn from it?

EP: I have to say I’m really interested in the citizen science around psychology because a lot of the citizen science psychology projects are being a participant in a research study and I wanted to try to develop a [00:05:00] project where just anybody could be involved in the stuff that we do in my lab as doing science. And one thing we spend a huge amount of time on is creating different stimuli. So the things you look at, the questions, the how do snails smell question, those sorts of different things. If we’re studying visual processing, we need lots of images. If we’re studying curiosity, we got questions, we need lots of questions.

And so that sort of brainstorming is a big part of what we do. And so we wanted to involve people in that so that just the general public, from kids up through adults, could get to engage in that type of science creation, so people submit images and many people also submit the question or questions that spark their curiosity about the images.

And we’ve gotten some interesting ones so far, so we’re hoping to… then it’s sort of going to be a multi-step process. And this is how we actually do most of our stimuli creation in the lab is we brainstorm lots of stimuli. And so that’s the first step, this Images of Curiosity project [00:06:00] right now. This phase one is, is brainstorming.

So we’re trying to get as many photographs as we can, and then we’re going to be kind of taking those and culling them down. Some of them may be appropriate for certain projects and some of them may be appropriate for different projects. And so then once we kind of have a more specific goal, so we might have a goal of having people brainstorm questions about images, or compare images — which one of these two sparks more curiosity for you?

So, so I think there’s a lot of things we can do. We could actually look at the properties of images that sparked more curiosity. We could look at the questions people generate about images, the things people are noticing in the images. 

And so there’s going to be another phase where we sort of have people potentially generate some questions or rate different features about the images so that we can then essentially provide this really large database that other scientists that we’re going to use that other scientists could use that the general [00:07:00] public should they want to. I’m really interested in the future — also helping and supporting to develop some databases that people could use for things like undergraduate capstone research projects, or that they could use for science fair type projects. So kind of making this publicly accessible data set of images and questions.

LB: That’s very cool. And it really underscores something that I was really feeling as I was thinking about the body of your work and how much of what you do feeds other things that you’re doing. Your work does not feel siloed to me; it feels like each thing has an application or an iteration or a next generation that seems related to other things that are going on.

So that was very fun for me to kind of see in looking at your work. 

And you’ve talked about it, I guess, as also maybe a place we’re trying to understand whether people are thinking about it from a science perspective or a math perspective or a historical perspective. And that sort of [00:08:00] goes to your interest in this discipline-specific curiosity. 

I was struck by something you said about rather than thinking about curiosity as a personality trait, or just a momentary state — that sort of state trait debate in curiosity — that you were trying to conceptualize it as something that can be discipline-specific. I find that really interesting.

Tell me more about that.

EP: Sure. It’s just goes back to my roots in my graduate training. 

I worked under Dr. Patricia Alexander at university of Maryland, and she had developed this model of domain learning, where we think about… we know so much about the different ways that your knowledge changes from your very first entry as you’re entering school or even pre K into a discipline — a discipline being like math or science or history or art — and that that is going to shift in fairly predictable ways as you develop. And if we think about the long scale [00:09:00] development if we’re thinking about history, somebody just learning history for the first time in kindergarten, first grade, and then eventually to the other end of somebody becoming an historian or learning science and doing these little science experiments as a preschooler, a toddler, and then all the way up through the spectrum of being a scientist who does this every day. 

And we know and we characterize a lot of different aspects of learning in these sort of predictable domain-specific ways. So, for instance, as you’re like… I’m trying to think of a good example of how to talk about this…. If I use…I’ll try to use knowledge as an example… But, so you develop these sort of collections of facts, you develop concepts and deeper understanding all the way up through, then as you’re gaining more expertise, you’re then becoming the creator of knowledge.

And so the way that we think about your knowledge changes, and if, as somebody in [00:10:00]psychology and education, I’ve developed this expertise in knowledge about my discipline in my field, and that knowledge has grown throughout the years, but I don’t have knowledge in the same way about other topics…I don’t have that deep knowledge about history, for example, or mathematics. 

And so I think it’s really important to think about the ways in which curiosity or other motivations may indeed be domain-specific within the domain, and they may develop in predictable ways throughout the domain. 

Something else I think is really interesting is the way that we think about knowledge. So, do we think if it’s something that’s acquired really quickly? Does it come from experts? Or is it something that I construct for myself? And might have really these nuances and subjectivity and I need to weigh evidence or I can create knowledge by doing science experiments. 

The way that we think about knowledge, these– what we refer to as epistemic beliefs — have really predictable shifts. And I think [00:11:00] those have a really important interaction with what we could possibly be curious about sort of the realm of possibility. 

So if I think knowledge… if I’m a young student, just learning history, science, and, and in those disciplines, I’m thinking about, well, my teacher is the authority or Google’s the authority that has answers and I can ask questions and the questions that matter to me are questions that can be answered fairly quickly by an expert, …then, I think, that looks really… that curiosity could look really different than somebody like when I think about waking up in the morning and thinking about is curiosity different from interest? Or what does it look like for someone to be curious about math? And I think about those questions and I think: it might take me years to answer that. I may never know the answer, but I am still wanting to know.

And I think that’s really different than… I mean even for myself … how I was feeling 10 years ago 20 years ago about like. Do I want to have questions that I don’t, that couldn’t be answered? Are those worthwhile questions? 

And so [00:12:00] I think there’s some predictable shifts. And I think we can think about people having different pathways. And I think about myself and my history background — I’m very curious about science, but I didn’t develop that curiosity and that deep knowledge of history. And so I think I just like… my pathway and curiosity for history looks really different than my pathway for psychology and science.

(music)

LB: You’re listening to choose to be curious conversations about curiosity and work and life. I’m your host, Lynn Borton, and my guest today is Emily Grosnickle Peterson. We’re talking about curiosity, not as a trait or state, but as something discipline-specific.

(music)

One of the things that I was struck with is you also have this pretty clear overlay on a lot of your work with an interest on the visual or spatial components, which is not about going to Google and just getting the short answer. It’s very much about being in the space with [00:13:00] whatever is piquing your curiosity, your interest, however, we might parse that. 

And I found myself…I learned something in doing my little research for this about your background in music…and it made me wonder whether there’s a through line there, because music is so much a visual and spatial process. I mean, we think of it as an auditory thing, but it’s — based on my reading, not as a musician, let me just be clear about that — and I just wonder if you see a through line 

EP: Hmm. That’s interesting. You know, I, I think I’m interested in the ways in which curiosity shapes visual processing because vision is, for a few reasons, but visions are well documented sensory modality. We know a lot about, um, How the brain processes visual stimuli. 

It’s also really important for science learning. We do a lot of diagrams and images and things. 

And so your thought is making [00:14:00] me think of two things. One, there is some definite visual processing in music, especially in the ways that you learn to kind of notice patterns and pay attention to anomalies within music, at least when you’re first picking up a piece. Or if you’re sight reading, so playing something you haven’t played before, and you’re just kind of taking a look at the music. 

In that way, I think there’s a lot of visual sensory patterning and kind of noticing and paying attention and wondering, like, where is this going to go? That’s interesting, because I think as you become more expert in the field, I would say that for me, music is almost exclusively auditory, and it’s about, yeah, noticing and hearing those patterns and kind of paying close attention. 

Yeah, I think this really is probably both personal and maybe developmental within this discipline. 

But when I took my first music theory class in undergraduate — I was a music major — and we had to do a bunch of…it was like [00:15:00] activities around sounds. Can you produce from your instrument that are unexpected?

LB: Uh huh.

EP: And so, it was very uncomfortable for me, because I felt comfort in sticking to the script. And so I actually don’t…I think now I have more curiosity about music, about sounds, about the patterns of music. 

But at the time, I was just…  I was kind of just in this sort of like exiting novice trying to progress in this field and I really was uncomfortable with this and this idea that we would play around with things that aren’t written down and make the most unusual sounds that we could make. 

I remember just really despising that class and just feeling so much discomfort, even though like, I mean I went into psychology because it was a field I felt I could ask questions and within that discipline, I felt so comfortable not knowing, but in music, I didn’t… I didn’t enjoy that at all.

Now, I love to hear [00:16:00] stuff that I haven’t heard before, but then I just listened to the same things, the same symphonies on repeat. So it sounds a little silly, but like, it’s definitely taken a turn.

LB: That’s so interesting. And it makes me think about…you wrote this really interesting paper with an undergraduate, right? Is that right? …on what curiosity looks like in math. And there were many things that I found interesting about this paper, but I loved your focus on the distinctions and the interesting interplay between curiosity, confusion, and frustration.

And I think of that with this story that you were just talking about. And you talk there about confusion being this sort of sense of not seeing a path forward and it being sort of painful and, and,…I’m hearing that in this like, wait, music is about order and structure and. And it’s like, you’re just blowing it all up on me.

And then frustration, the [00:17:00] sense of loss of control and helplessness. Like I don’t know what to do with this. And then, you know –help me out here—because my understanding in the paper was that curiosity required both a strong sense of agency and a sense that you could actually do something about it.

So whether it’s in music or, or in math, understanding the interplay of those things seems really important to me. I mean, what did you feel like was the big takeaway from that paper and thinking that through?

EP: Yeah. I mean, that’s really interesting that you’re connecting that, because I think I had a similar feeling about math and it being about order and predictability, and there being right answers and right ways of doing thing in the same way that I felt about music, that there’s the right notes and the right sounds….and like, you’re aiming for this sort of ideal state or ideal perfection of sounds in the same way that [00:18:00] math was all about this order. 

And I think that’s a way… from what we did in the research on this, to write this paper…it seems that that’s a way that most people think about math prior to becoming going in—unless you pursue math as an undergraduate or graduate student—most people think about math as being about numbers. 

And I really think about, again, this like realm of like what is available to be curious about and what’s available to notice and pay attention to that could spark wonder, as opposed to spark confusion or frustration…and I think, if you think about math as being about numbers and about formulas and about finding answers, I think that really restricts the range of things that are possible to be curious about. 

In the same way that like I thought about … yeah, I thought about music as being orders and notes and sound … and I think that just really restricted the range of possibilities [00:19:00] that what I could be curious about and kind of then leads to if you experienced a gap—so we think about curiosity often as being a gap have involving a gap in your knowledge. But I think it also is about: how do you feel about that gap?

And if I think about math as being numbers and formulas and calculations, then that gap is like, well, I need to close it because, and if I can’t, I’m probably confused or maybe I’m frustrated because it’s taking me too long to get the answer.

LB: Yeah, yeah. I remember in the paper on math, you actually explore this idea about how students feel about their interest or curiosity—about that gap—and the importance of teachers helping them to figure out how to frame that. Is that a fair way to describe what you were talking about there?

I mean, it seems like it’s a place where you were making a distinction between interest and curiosity, but also [00:20:00] understanding that, wow, as educators (– that’s the lens you’re approaching all of this from too–), it’s crucial to be able to help students flag their curiosity and understand that some of the discomfort that comes with it might not be a bad thing.

EP: Mm hmm. Mm

LB: And I think that’s an interesting paradox of curiosity, that sometimes curiosity feels bad. We’re told to be curious and go do these things. And sometimes it’s very uncomfortable.

EP: Mm hmm. Yeah…I struggle with this a bit because I think it can be uncomfortable, but if it gets too uncomfortable do we stop calling it curiosity and do we call it something else?

LB: Oh, like what?

EP: Confusion or frustration! And is it that I’m kind of maybe floating in between? Or maybe we’re experiencing simultaneously,… maybe I feel curiosity and frustrated simultaneously, that it’s like, this sort of like, I, I want to know, like, this would be really great to find out. But [00:21:00] also like, I, I want to, I want to just have the answer. Or I want to have an answer or I want to make progress towards any answer.

And that if you’re losing out on that sense of agency, either momentarily or more long-term… This is one thing I have struggled with in terms of defining curiosity: If it doesn’t feel that sort of like (-– I’m here, like mimicking with my hands–) but I don’t know how to do it. That’s sort of like on edge sense of excitement. Is that actually curiosity, or is it something else?

LB: Oh, see, this goes to a big question I have about whether or not we’re using one word to describe very many, very dissimilar feelings, behaviors, attitudes, emotions. Yeah….

EP: Yeah, we’ve been struggling with this as we’re trying to make a new [00:22:00] survey that measured curiosity. Well, what are the synonyms you can use in the survey? If you reframe the question you ask, as opposed to being like, how curious do you feel in science class? Okay, well, what words can I use to replace that? A lot of surveys will use, well, how interested do you feel in X, Y, Z?… uh, in doing something. 

But… are curiosity and interest synonyms? Are they the same thing? 

If I say I feel interested in solving unknown equations… a really cool example recently is: some high schoolers who solved the Pythagorean Theorem…and I was thinking about them in terms of, they probably experienced a lot of interest and curiosity, but they probably had interest in closing this gap, which I think is different than interest in,..

So I was interested in math class in just solving the Pythagorean Theorem. I was someone who was happy to do worksheets and just answer the questions the teacher put on the worksheet and see if I could do it. And that felt interesting to me, but I don’t think I experienced [00:23:00] that curiosity so much. And I may have, but I may have had some moments of curiosity, like, why, why do we do it like that?And. I could ask that question out of curiosity, but I could also ask that question out of confusion or frustration. Why do we do it like that? Which is really different than being like, Huh, why does a squared plus b squared equals c squared? And is it possible that we could use some different methods to try to figure out why this is?

LB: Yeah. 

I’m going to leave it right there! I want to close the conversation with everyone being like, Oh man, I don’t know how to think about this! 

But it’s a great segue to — you know, is curiosity like interest? —  to my Big Jar of Wannabe Analogies. So are you game for this?

EP: Of course! Did you know that I studied analogical reasoning in grad school as well?

LB: How did I not know that!? Okay. that’s another conversation. 

Okay. So I have my big jar and I’m pulling out slips of [00:24:00] paper. One for you, one for me and one for our audience. Okay. 

Yours is a dam. How is curiosity like a dam?

Mine is banana and I have one for the audience. 

So do you want to go first or do you want me to go?

EP: Oh, um, how is curiosity like a dam? Um, I guess I’ll go first. I’ll see what I can talk through. 

Yeah, I guess I, I maybe don’t know as much about dams as I wish I did in this situation, but what I…what I, do know is that I think about dams as a building, building, building, and I’m thinking about there being some sort of pressure behind it, um, that’s, A dam’s allowing the supporting of this kind of building of energy in which sort of curiosity has that same kind of heightened, heightened energy and heightened excitement that [00:25:00] can then burst free at any moment.

LB: Nice! Nice. I like that. I like that. Okay. Um, hmm. Banana.

EP: I think you got the hard one…

LB: How is curiosity like a banana? Um, well, uh, you know, a banana is a kind of surprising fruit. It…I don’t know about you, but what I get when I peel a banana is not what I would expect, but from having had the experience of previously peeling a banana.

And I think sometimes curiosity is like that. That you don’t always get what you’re expecting, um, and that sometimes you just have to peel the banana and, uh, and see what you get. So that’s how, I guess how, and I don’t know. 

And audience, yours this trail. How is curiosity like a trail? Let me know, #analogy. 

Well, Emily, this has been great and we definitely have to talk about this analogous processing thing.

Thank [00:26:00] you so much for this!

EP: Thank you, Lynn. This was delightful.

LB: You’ve been listening to Choose to be Curious. I’m your host, Lynn Borton. Thank you for joining me today. 

You can find all my shows on my website at choosetobecurious.com. I hope you’ll follow me here, there, and on Facebook and Instagram @choosetobecurious, where you can share your trail analogy, #analogy. 

Many thanks to my guest, Emily Grossnickle Peterson. Links to her Educational Neuroscience Lab on my website — as well as links to the Scistarter conversation. 

Thanks, too, to Sean Balick for our theme music, and this is “A Burst of Light” by Delray, via Blue Dot Sessions. 

I find myself thinking a lot about this question of how curiosity and interest overlap — and differ. They’re not interchangeable, but they sure do intersect. [00:27:00]

How would you describe their relationship? 

I hope you’ll join us again next time. Until then, choose to be curious.

(music)

LB: So tell me about this analogous processing.

EP: Yeah, the lab I was in didn’t just study analogies. We studied the umbrella term of relational reasoning. Analogies is one type of relationship. We developed a measure that looked at analogical reasoning, but other types of reasoning. So we included anomalies, so anomalous reasoning; antithetical reasoning; and, ..oh my gosh, it was four A’s. …So, analogy, oh. I would call it “mutual exclusion”, that’s another type of relationship. We called it “antinomous” but I think my advisor made up that term… Thinking about like, what are those different types of possible relationships that we could reason about.[00:28:00]

Leave a comment