Unsatisfied curiosity and its relation to cognitive control

The main purpose of the present study is to examine the relationship between unsatisfied curiosity and cognitive control processes. For this purpose, three different experimental studies were conducted with three different groups of participants aged between 18-26 years. In experiment 1 and experiment 3, satisfied and unsatisfied curiosity conditions were administered in separate blocks. In experiment 2, satisfied and unsatisfied curiosity conditions were randomly administered within a single block. In each experimental block, there were sub-blocks in which a curiosity condition was followed by a cognitive control task. In satisfied curiosity condition, information about the curiosity-inducing stimulus was presented; in unsatisfied curiosity condition, a repetition of the curiosity-inducing stimulus or a blank screen was presented. Each experiment included a modified Eriksen flanker task as a cognitive control task. Reaction time, percentage of correct responses, and omission rate were measured for cognitive control performance. The results revealed that, with exceptions in experiments 2 and 3, measures of cognitive control performance were not affected by satisfied/unsatisfied curiosity conditions. Overall, a congruency effect was observed in cognitive control performance. That is, participants responded faster, more accurately, and with fewer omission errors to congruent flanker stimuli compared to incongruent ones. Only in experiment 2, participants had lower reaction times in unsatisfied curiosity condition compared to satisfied curiosity condition. v Additionally, only in experiment 2, no congruency effect was observed in omission rates, regardless of the satisfied/unsatisfied curiosity condition. The relationship between unsatisfied curiosity and cognitive control processes was discussed in the perspectives of semantic memory and attention processes.