The Future Belongs to the Curious: Towards Automatic Understanding and Recognition of Curiosity in Children

Abstract

Curiosity plays a crucial role in learning and education of children. Given its complex nature, it is extremely challenging to automatically understand and recognize it. In this paper, we discuss the contexts under which curiosity can be elicited and provide an associated taxonomy. We present an initial empirical study of curiosity that includes the analysis of cooccurring emotions and the valence associated with it, together with gender-specific analysis. We also discuss the visual, acoustic and verbal behavior indicators of curiosity. Our discussions and analysis uncover some of the underlying complexities of curiosity and its temporal evolution, which is a step towards its automatic understanding and recognition. Finally, considering the central role of curiosity in education, we present two education-centered application areas that could greatly benefit from its automatic recognition.