What drives our curiosity remains an elusive and hotly debated issue, with multiple hypotheses proposed but a cohesive account yet to be established. This review discusses traditional and emergent theories that frame curiosity as a desire to know and a drive to learn, respectively. We adopt a model-based approach that maps the temporal dynamics of various factors underlying curiosity-based exploration, such as uncertainty, information gain, and learning progress. In so doing, we identify the limitations of past theories and posit an integrated account that harnesses their strengths in describing curiosity as a tool for optimal environmental exploration. In our unified account, curiosity serves as a ‘common currency’ for exploration, which must be balanced with other drives such as safety and hunger to achieve efficient action.

中文翻译：

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好奇心和最优探索的动力

是什么激发了我们的好奇心仍然是一个难以捉摸且备受争议的问题，人们提出了多种假设，但尚未建立一个有凝聚力的解释。这篇评论讨论了传统理论和新兴理论，这些理论分别将好奇心视为求知欲望和学习动力。我们采用基于模型的方法来映射基于好奇心的探索背后的各种因素的时间动态，例如不确定性、信息增益和学习进度。在此过程中，我们认识到了过去理论的局限性，并提出了一个综合的解释，利用它们的优势将好奇心描述为最佳环境探索的工具。在我们的统一账户中，好奇心是探索的“共同货币”，它必须与安全和饥饿等其他驱动力相平衡，以实现有效的行动。