Autistic traits foster effective curiosity-driven exploration.

ABSTRACT: Curiosity-driven exploration involves actively engaging with the environment to learn from it. Here, we hypothesize that the cognitive mechanisms underlying exploratory behavior may differ across individuals depending on personal characteristics such as autistic traits. In turn, this variability might influence successful exploration. To investigate this, we collected self- and other-reports of autistic traits from university students, and tested them in an exploration task in which participants could learn the hiding patterns of multiple characters. Participants' prediction errors and learning progress (i.e., the decrease in prediction error) on the task were tracked with a hierarchical delta-rule model. Crucially, participants could freely decide when to disengage from a character and wh

SUBMITTER: Poli F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11527316 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature