Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Open-ended exploration and learning of novel environments is an activity of crucial evolutionary significance. Extantliterature studying these behaviors in human subjects, however, remains sparse. Our study examined spontaneous humanexploration (characterized using video) and subsequent memory of an art exhibit - a complex, real-life environment - asa function of approach vs. avoidance motivation contexts and individual differences. Building on our prior findings thatmotivational context and individual differences may interact to predict memory, but not exploration time, the present workuses computer vision approaches to extract more nuanced measures of exploration from video data, such as path lengthand curvilinearity. Preliminary analysis suggested that locomotor activity may be greater under approach vs. avoidancemotivation, consistent with models linking approach motivation to dopaminergic function and associated motor activity.This and other results are discussed in the larger context of research characterizing exploration, locomotion, and memoryencoding processes in motivated behavior.