Understanding exploration by formalizing the function of curiosity

Rachit Dubey is a PhD scholar part of the Computational Cognitive Science Lab, Princeton University. In his talk at The Active Child workshop, he has presented a rational model that provides a functional explanation of curiosity, and unifies previous distinct theories into a single framework. Rachit is interested in researching reward in reinforcement learning.

About TAC workshop
The Active Child workshop (Nov 30-Dec 3, 2021), organised by the University of Göttingen and Uppsala University, aimed to bring together diverse perspectives on how young children selectively explore particular aspects of their rich environment and steer their own learning progress, with regard to the theories explaining how children contribute to their learning. It addressed the mechanisms that support active learning, and the methods that can be used to study this phenomenon. This series of talks and workshops covered varied topics such as the development of children’s active learning, the neurophysiological markers of active learning, the philosophy of curiosity-driven learning as well as the motor and socio-cognitive developmental milestones that underlie children’s active exploration.