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including investigation and learning. Animals,
not only humans display behaviors caused by
the emotion of curiosity. Such behaviors, which
are more than only the fixed instinctive reflexes,
have been widely perceived in apes, cats, rats
(Berlyne, 1955), raccoons, insects, and other
beings. Animal curiosity is focused not only on
hunting and foraging; it seems there is an abstract
mode and motivation, such as playfulness (that is
important in the development of cubs, pups, and
other offspring). Playfulness in some animals, for
example cats or dogs, makes them pretend that
lifeless objects are alive.
Intellectual curiosity drives people to research,
study, and thus to knowing new things. Curiosity
about ideas expressed in philosophy often leads
to meta-curiosity - investigation into curiosity
itself, conducted in terms of the abstract mode of
thinking; people focus on broadening the limits of
knowledge, applying imagination and creativity,
exploring scientific and philosophical reasoning
about world and consciousness. Some social and
educational psychologists find curiosity an impor-
tant factor that promotes intrinsic motivation to act
because of one's own interest and enjoyment not
depending on external rewards. Intrinsic motiva-
tion refers to curiosity about and interest in the
task itself, which exists in a person and rewarded
by individual enjoyment and satisfaction. How-
ever, there is also a need for attaining an outcome
that is norm referenced, accepted by others, and
rewarded, and such performance is driven by
extrinsic motivation. Curricular and instructional
design, testing, and grading do not come in mind
when one seeks existential or empirical answers
about reasons making sense of things or the human
condition. We may say we owe a lot to curiosity
in history, starting with indigenous tribes, then
Greeks, other ancient schools, and all those who
wanted to know much, know why, and avoid bad
things happening for them because of that.
There is no doubt some infants (and also kittens,
puppies, and other young animals including rats)
are more curious than others, but the sources are
scarce about what makes some infants curious,
whether it is correlated with their intelligence
and creativity, and how is curiosity in infancy
correlated with achievement in later life periods.
In the sixties and seventies researchers declared
a need to develop a construct of science curios-
ity in children and to set up valid instruments for
measuring curiosity (Berlyne, 1960; Harty &
Beall, 1984); they developed several Likert-type
instruments with items rated by children. Many
self-report instruments followed (for example,
Curiosity and Exploration Inventory by Kashdan
et al., 2009), along with
Dictionaries define curiosity as a strong desire
to know or learn something, inquisitiveness, and
an interest leading to inquiry about unusual things.
However, the notion of curiosity has been tied in
the past with connotations such as nosiness - an
inquisitive interest in others' concerns, and, even
earlier as carefulness and fastidiousness, according
to most of dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster
or Dictionary.com. A proverb 'curiosity killed the
cat' is about being inquisitive or even intrusive
about other people's affairs that shouldn't con-
cern others, which may get a nosy person into
trouble. There is also a morbid curiosity that is
built by desire to see hurtful events, accidents,
death, blood, violence, and also monstrosities or
abnormalities, for example a bearded woman in a
circus or a gigantic skeleton in a natural science
museum. Surprisingly, a search term 'curiosity'
could not be found at the site 'Curiosity.com
from the Discovery' website (2012) that claims
it “explores life's most fascinating mysteries.”
Curiosity is a name given several enterprises,
bands, and online groups such as Curiosity Won-
derment and Exploration group (http://curiosity-
group.com/); for example, 'Curiosity' is a name of
a NASA's car-sized rover that has been launched
on Mars (NASA, 2012) to monitor space radia-
tion. However, it is still difficult to find answers
to many questions about current links and correla-
