We now know that a layer of emotion enriches memories while they’re being formed and improves recall when we want access to that information later. Emotions like compassion or outrage or the type of hyper attention we have in a potentially dangerous situation trigger richer encoding. But what if the content we want to deliver has nothing to do with babies or injustice or self-preservation?
Consider curiosity.
What we’re learning is that once a brain is in a curious state, it’s not only primed to learn about the ideas that triggered that intrigue — but incidental (including unrelated and potentially boring) information presented proximically as well.
Why is that?
Tags: attention • brain • Curiosity • Design • learning • learning science • Memory • neuroscience