🗺️ How Curiosity Inspires Better Mental Maps
New research shows that curiosity drives spatial exploration and shapes how accurately we remember the world
Humans are natural explorers. From early childhood, we are drawn to the unknown, exploring new environments just to see what’s hidden within them. As youngsters, we plod around from room to room in our homes, investigating unusual kitchen utensils or rummaging through drawers. As adults, we travel to unusual destinations and cultures, familiarizing ourselves with different ways of living.
Exploration of the unknown comes with some obvious risks and tradeoffs, and some of us are more curious than others. But how does our level of curiosity impact the way we explore and remember the world around us?
A new study has shed some light on how curiosity affects explorational styles and impacts the mental maps we build of new environments.
💡 How curiosity influences exploration and memory
Researchers at Cardiff University recruited two groups of university students (N = 28 for Experiment 1 and N = 60 for Experiment 2) and asked them to explore a series of virtual rooms.
Here’s how the study worked:
Curiosity ratings: Before entering each room, participants saw a label (e.g. "Museum" or "Library") and rated their curiosity about exploring it on a scale from 1 to 10.
Free exploration: Participants then navigated a 3D virtual environment, moving freely through each room at their own pace.
Interest ratings: After deciding to end their exploration and leave the room, they rated how interesting they found the room on a scale from 1 to 10.
Exploration measures: While participants navigated each room, researchers recorded two aspects of spatial exploration:
Path roaming—how thoroughly participants moved around each room (spatial exploration).
Head-direction roaming—how widely participants visually scanned each room by turning their virtual heads as they navigated (visual exploration).
Cognitive map testing (Experiment 2 only): After all explorations, participants completed a sketch-map memory test, drawing the layout of each room and including major features like doors and furniture. These maps were scored across four dimensions: object presence, spatial distortion or rotation, relative positioning, and spatial proportion.
So what did the researchers find?
Higher pre-room curiosity predicted broader spatial exploration (higher path roaming). In other words, participants who felt more curious before entering a room explored it more thoroughly.
Interest ratings produced a different pattern. Higher ratings of post-room interest predicted more extensive visual exploration (higher head-direction roaming), suggesting that finding a space interesting made people look around more carefully.
Higher pre-room curiosity and greater spatial exploration predicted better cognitive map sketches. People who were more curious before exploring (and who then explored more broadly) created more detailed and spatially accurate mental representations of the rooms they navigated.
Interestingly, people with higher stress tolerance—a measure of how well someone copes with uncertainty—showed a stronger link between curiosity and exploration. People who were more comfortable with uncertainty were better able to act on their curiosity when it came to spatial navigation.
The research shows how curiosity, exploration, and memory are intertwined when we encounter new environments. Curiosity is more than just a feeling—it motivates deeper learning and stronger memory formation.
⭐️ Takeaway tips
#1. Use curiosity as a tool for better learning
Feeling curious primes your brain to explore more broadly and absorb more detail. When facing a new environment or topic, actively stoke your curiosity beforehand by imagining which questions get you most excited and what kinds of discoveries would be most inspiring.
#2. Move through space intentionally
When exploring a new environment—whether it’s a new city, park, workplace, or museum—physically move around and cover as much ground as possible to develop strong and memorable mental maps. Instead of brief glimpses each way from a single location, walk and interact with the space around you.
#3. Build comfort with uncertainty
People who tolerate uncertainty well tend to act on their curiosity more effectively. If uncertainty scares you, practice exposing yourself to it on a small scale. You could take unfamiliar routes to work or actively engage with new and complex ideas to build your exploratory instincts.
“Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.”
~ Joseph Addison